Drug of Choice
by Colubrina
Summary: She's one of the runaways that show up on the beach. Usually, they're nothing more than dinner but Dwayne can't tell what this one is. Soul mates everybody lived AU
1. Chapter 1 The Waif

He'd been watching her sleep for a week. The knowledge it was a disturbing thing to do itched at the back of his brain, but Dwayne had done so many disturbing things over the years this felt trivial. She'd appeared out of nowhere, the way the vagrants and runaways always did, a bed made up past the high tide line up against the wind break of the boardwalk, a knife in her hand whenever she closed her eyes. Usually he spotted girls like her and felt the way he imagined a hawk did when it saw the rabbit. Dinner. If not today, then tomorrow or next week. The sweetness of the chase, the feel of the blood in your mouth. The rush. You learned to look out for the ones that had poison running through their veins, to avoid them. Addicts gave him a headache. She wasn't that. That he knew. She wasn't an addict. She wasn't dinner. He couldn't tell what she was.

"You want a pet?" David had perched on the wall next to him and Dwayne shrugged. Feelings weren't a thing he talked about. Not with anyone. Certainly not with David. "Take her if you do," David said, "but we're going."

It was half an order, but only half, so he folded his arms and let the others leave. He'd killed three people who'd approached her at night so far. It happened, he knew. You could fixate on things, fixate on _people_. Eternity was long and you didn't stop feeling things or wanting things just because you became a thing yourself. It just hadn't happened to him before. Even when he'd been human he'd never wanted like this. He'd say it felt unnatural, but when you stopped aging the concept of what was natural and what wasn't became far more flexible. The world had more in it than even the poets knew. Far more.

He should know. He was one of those mysteries.

She turned on the sand, uncomfortable. Maybe she could sense the predator hovering just out of sight. People did. No matter how much civilization tried to numb the senses, the hind brain knew when it was being hunted. He pushed himself up off the wall and into the air. Away from the heat rising off the concrete and the sand it got cold. Funny how you could still feel cold when you were dead.

Maybe tomorrow night he'd take her. An offer of a meal, hands spread and a story that he'd been on the run too, he knew what it was like. No funny business, no obligations. Just some take out Chinese around a fire. It would probably work. He wouldn't even have to lie because he'd been there, alone and lost and angry and ready to be turned. He could lure her with truth and then slip her some blood and she'd be stuck the way he'd been. Not that he minded now. Not that he'd ever minded.

It was good to be a vampire.

With that thought in mind he turned to where his brothers had gone and moved to join them. He'd worry about the girl later.

Later turned out to be an hour later.

It was Marko who told him. He'd come back to their lair with beer that he'd either stolen or purchased with money he'd stolen and said as he tossed the bottle over, "The cops picked up that piece you've been staring at."

Dwayne looked at him, unsmiling, and Marko grinned and took a long swallow before he explained. "Rounded up a bunch of people off the beach for vagrancy," he said. "They were herding them into the station when I went by. Part of the current clean up the town project, I suppose."

Dwayne took a long swallow and didn't say anything. They usually let the vagrants go after a night in a cell. It was uncomfortable, but no less safe than the sand most of the time and sometimes even came with a free meal. Paul must've read his mind because he said, his voice completely neutral, "They've been putting people on buses with one-way tickets out of town."

Dwayne set the beer down. He could see David put his tongue between his teeth as he regarded him, and then David said, "Well, shall we go get her?"

Bare was the back without brother. Wasn't that the saying? He stood and David smiled and then they were out and on their way.

"You gonna turn her?" Marko asked as they loped their way up the sidewalk to the police station.

"Bet he doesn't even tell her," Paul said.

"Because that went so well last time," Marko said.

David stopped in his tracks and turned to look back at the pair of them. Marko held his hands up in a false gesture of surrender and, after a long look, David turned, pulled a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it as they kept walking. The blue and green neon of the precinct station's sign flickered as they passed under it and the pretty blonde receptionist half stood as they entered.

"Didn't you see the warning?" she asked in the sort of nagging voice she probably used when she demanded to speak to a manager because the craft store was out of the glue they'd listed in the sales flier. "There's no smoking in here."

Dwayne looked back at the door and, sure enough, there was the ubiquitous sticker: a cigarette in a red circle with a line through it. David inhaled deeply on the forbidden cigarette and then leaned toward the receptionist. He blew a long stream of smoke into her face then ground the cigarette out on her desk. "I'm sorry," he said with a smile that bared his teeth. "My mistake."

"Can I help you?" she asked with outrage she had to suppress. Humans always wanted to kill them.

The group of homeless people the police had rounded up still stood in a cluster, arms wrapped around themselves, clutching precious backpacks. David waved a hand over in the direction of the group. "I'm here to get my sister," he said. "Take her off your hands."

One of the on-duty officers wandered over. He looked them up and down with the kind of slow, assessment that judged them and found them wanting. Hoodlums. Trouble. He put his hands on his hips, one resting on the nightstick he surely wanted an excuse to use. "You have a sister?" he asked.

"So his mother claimed," Marko said.

David pointed at the girl. She'd been staring at them since they came in, but most of the entire group had so that didn't make her stand out. He snapped his fingers and jerked his head toward them in a silent command and she extricated herself and came across the room, sullen, silent, and perfectly willing to grasp at any excuse to get out of this place.

"Sis," David said with a tilt of his head. He reached a hand out to grab her arm and she neatly dodged under it and ran straight into Dwayne instead. The same shock that hit him whenever he looked at her thrummed along his skin. She sucked in her own breath and he thought she might feel it too, but she didn't say anything. She just let him loop one arm around her shoulders and all five of them looked at the cop. He could feel her shirt against his chest, could feel warmth seeping through the thin fabric. She shivered and he tightened his grip.

"Can we go?" David asked.

Dwayne could see the cop wanted to ask for proof, wanted to thwart them, wanted to do anything that made their lives more difficult. "How do I know your intentions ain't vile?" he asked.

"He's a shit hole, but he's my brother all right," the girl said.

That was as good a definition of David as Dwayne had ever heard.

"What's her name?" the cop asked.

"Cassiopeia," Dwayne said.

The cop looked at her. "I don't carry ID," she said. "You want them to go ask mom for a birth certificate or something? She probably burned it on accident while looking for drugs."

"Just go," the cop said. His mouth curled with disgust at the girl, at the boys who'd come for her, at the whole lot of degenerates and druggies that filled his town. "And don't let me catch you sleeping on the beach again, _Cassie_."

Marko gave a little two fingered salute, David puckered up his lips at the receptionist and blew her a kiss, and they turned and left. They were two blocks away before she said, bravado transparent, "Who are you? I don't hook, so if that's what you – "

"Want dinner?" David asked before she could go on. "I do believe Marko was just about to get takeout."

She flicked a nervous glance at Marko who shrugged. "Indian?" he asked.

"Always a good choice," David said.

"What's your name?" Paul asked.

Dwayne could feel her turn to look at him but he kept his face impassive. He'd loosened his grip on her enough she could walk but he was ready to grab at her if she fled, rabbit that she was. Or maybe not wholly a rabbit because she said, half-defensively, "Cassiopeia, didn't you say? Cassie. Cass."

"Look, Dwayne named his pet," David said. "Isn't that the sweetest?"

"Leave her alone," Dwayne said when she stiffened and David laughed. It was the genuinely amused laugh, though, not the one that tended to presage mayhem.

"She needs a bath," David said. "Handle that, would you?" and then he was gone, up into the darkness and it was Paul's turn to laugh at the horror on her face.

"Don't worry, Dwayne's new friend," he said. "There's hot water springs where we're going, and Star left enough clothes for a dozen girls, and none of us have _vile intentions_." He twisted the words into an exaggerated mockery of the cop's accusation and mugged a recoil broad enough to trick a laugh out of her before he, too, shot up and away and Dwayne was left alone with her. She stopped walking.

"What are they?" she asked. She seemed calm – too calm – and he knew that had to be covering the kind of shaking hysterics that drew the eyes of passers-by. People didn't fly. People also didn't tend to come and bail strangers out of trouble, not without wanting something. She was probably more worried about that than their disappearances into the night air.

"They just move quickly," he said. "Assholes."

She took a deep breath and then splayed one hand against his skin. He closed his eyes at the shock of it. It was worse, better, stronger than a touch through fabric. It was addictive. "What is _this_?" she asked and he knew she felt it too. That was why she hadn't run the moment they were clear of the police station. It was why she wasn't running now, despite the way her hand was shaking.

"I don't know," he admitted. "Something." He didn't want to talk about it. "Dinner?"

"It's like two in the morning," she said.

"And you're hungry."

"I meant, where will you get food?"

Oh. That. "Taste of India is always open," he said.

"Because they sell x."

"Also samosas."

Marko wasn't back yet with those samosas when they got to the cave. He had to let her go to make his way down into their lair and she inhaled before following him down into the darkness. "There's a hot water spring," he said, pointing. If he didn't send her there now, when the physical contact had been broken, he might not be able to break it again.

"For that bath," she said, then added defensively, "It's hard when you live on the beach."

"I know," he said. He'd lived on city streets, worse, he suspected, then this beach. He'd also already looked threatening enough people had mostly let him be.

Mostly.

He remembered how hard it had been.

"There's towels down there," he said. He didn't know how clean they were.

"Clothes?" she asked.

Star's old stuff was still shoved in the boxes she'd used before she'd disappeared after the Michael disaster. He tipped his head toward the pile and the girl – Cass – gave him a suspicious look before squatting down and opening up the first one. "Who was Star?" she asked as she pulled shawls and skirts and tops out one at a time. "He said her name was Star, right?"

"A girl who used to live here," he said.

"She dead?"

Always a good question about Star.

"Don't think so," he settled on. It must have been reassuring enough because she took a handful of the non-dead woman's clothes and picked her way back to where the spring was, around a corner, out of sight. He almost sagged when he couldn't see her anymore, a puppet with its strings cut. He sat, unmoving, and watched where she'd gone until Marko came in behind him tossed the paper container of samosas at him without so much as a word. Dwayne leveled a long, slow look at his brother. If his reflexes had been slower, if that box had hit him on the head, he'd have been furious.

"Don't think this is what you're hungry for," Marko said, ignoring the threat. His assessment was true enough. The idea of human food turned his stomach most days. Beer, bourbon, and blood were more his speed. Marko's too, for that matter.

"It'll do," he said. He set it down and linked his fingers behind his head, eyes steady on the corner Cass had turned. How long did it take women to bathe? He hated not being able to feel her now that she was out of sight.

"I had a bite behind the shop," Marko said, trying to watch him without being too obvious. "Worked out for me."

"I want to feed." That was Paul, one step behind Marko as usual. He settled down on one of the worn chairs and kicked his feet up. "Rescuing strays gives me an appetite."

"I want her to feed." David so rarely brought up the rear Dwayne had to wonder how long he'd been squatting in the shadows, watching them all. Since he'd arrived, probably. "Remember Max?"

"Hard to forget," Marko said. He made a whooshing noise, mimicking the fire that had roared to life around the vampire. "Oh Lucy. I love you so much, Lucy." He grabbed at his throat and pretended to die with as much drama and agony as he could fake. He'd missed his calling in the theater and Dwayne allowed a small smile to appear.

"Dying for love," Paul said with a twist of his mouth. "Not my thing."

"Mine either," David said. "This like that?"

"It won't be," Dwayne said.

"Good," he said. He handed the blood bottle to Dwayne. "She drinks or she goes."

Dwayne took it and nodded. That going would involve her death went without saying. They cleaned up their messes these days. She picked that moment to reappear, and Paul let out a low whistle. Their waif cleaned up well. Dwayne hadn't even realized Star had had jeans in her motley collection of scarves and skirts, but Cass had managed to find a pair. Paired with her own boots and one of Star's halters she looked…

She looked good enough to eat.

He'd kill anyone who tried.

She had a dirty hand towel she was still using to blot water out of her hair and he pointed to the ground in front of him in a silent order that made her scowl, but when Marko grinned in a way that showed a hint of fangs she shivered and picked her way through their cluttered junk and sat down. He might be an autocratic bastard, but he was still safety in a room filled with threats. They still had this _thing_ between them. He handed her the container of samosas. "Eat," he said.

"Anyone else want some?" she asked, her fingers hesitating on lid.

"I already had something," Marko said.

"I'll grab a bite later," Paul added.

Dwayne took the towel and took over drying her hair as she pried open the package and picked out the first one and took a bite. She held herself stiffly between his feet as he worked his way through her hair with the sort of slow patience eternity could give you. Paul tossed him a comb and, as she ate the second trying not to look too starving or too grateful, he began to pick his way through the wet locks.

"As fun as this is," Marko said, "The night isn't over. I'm gone."

David stood and Dwayne met his eyes. A silent nod of acquiescence and David followed Marko away, a sharp gesture telling Paul to follow. There were half orders, and there were orders, and getting her to drink was the latter. Dwayne wouldn't have been able to disobey that any more than he'd have been able to slit his own throat.

"Cass," he said once they were gone. "You okay?"

"I'm not in jail," she said. "It'll do."

He took a breath, closed his eyes, and let what he was show on his face. The real him? A mask? They were all Janus, with both faces equally real and equally false. "Cass," he said again and she turned. He could hear her suck in her breath, could feel the loss when she scrambled away, dinner forgotten, not willing to lean up against his leg any longer. He opened his eyes. She'd flattened herself against the far wall. It was a bad strategic choice. It left him between her and the only exit you could reach without flying. Maybe she thought she could flee out through the back but the cave just got smaller and lower until you were trapped in darkness and dirt.

"Am I dinner?" she asked. Her voice was remarkably calm and she'd pulled out the knife she slept with and was holding it toward him. "Is that the plan?"

"Vampires," he said. David had said the litany to him. He'd heard him say it to Star, to Michael, to Marko. He'd never uttered it himself. The words had the cadence of a prayer or a promise. They were the ties that bound. "You'll never grow old. Never die."

"What's the price?" she asked.

It wasn't the response he'd expected, which was funny because that was almost word for word what he'd said to David all those years ago. _What's the catch?_ he'd asked. Nothing came free in this world. He was bound to David in ways none of them quite understood, ways none of them questioned. She would be too. "You can't quit it," he said.

"How?" she asked.

He picked up the bottle and held it out to her. "Drink," he said. _This is my blood you drink_ , went the liturgy if he remembered right. Church wasn't a place he could go anymore.

She lowered the knife and took a few steps toward him and he softened his features back into human, back into the sort of thing people trusted. "Do we lose our souls?" she asked.

"Do we have them?"

Another few steps.

"The church my mother took me to said so."

He shrugged. Theology said a lot of things. So far none of them had proved true but holy water did burn so maybe the priests were right and he was wrong.

Another step. "Of course, they also told me to go back home when I told them -." She stopped.

"Told them what?"

"Doesn't matter."

He was quite sure it did.

She took the bottle. "Whose is it?"

Another question he hadn't anticipated. "David's," he said.

"Why?"

"He's the -."

"Leader, right." She raised it in a salute toward the shadows. "May we be gathered into one," she said, then tipped it back and drank.

The others must have stayed present but out of sight because as soon as she swallowed he heard a hooting of delight and Marko swung back into the room, clapping.

"Sister," David said, a slightly more sincere echo of what he'd said earlier. He took the bottle out of her hand and took a swallow of his own before handing it over to Paul, who tipped it into his mouth. "Take this, all of you, and drink from it," David said. "This is the blood of our everlasting covenant."

"One of us," Paul said and wiped his mouth before handing the bottle to Marko.

"One of us," he said, raising it to her in a delighted salute. "Shit load better than last time."

"One of us," Dwayne said as he took his drink, his eyes never leaving her face, and handed the bottle back to David. He reached his hand out and she took it and that energy sparked again and he tightened his grip so much she flinched.

"Try not to break her the first night," David said.

"New blood," Marko said, almost vibrating. "Let's go."

The urge to go, to move, to let off steam pushed at Dwayne too. Letting someone in was kinetic. It made you wild. It made you want to throw yourself into the air and the sea and feel again what made you better, what made you more real, more alive, more present than the shadows that walked through this world and thought they lived. They'd done it before just to feel this, just to know they could, then watched the halfling not keep up. Most couldn't. Most didn't want to. Drinking from a bottle was one thing. Sinking your teeth into a person was another. Feeling them die under you… he loved it. He wanted to grab some witless tourist now and watch her fear grow. He wanted to play with her. Chase her through the wood and let he think she was getting away only to turn and see Marko or Paul in front of her, only to come up behind her, only for David to float down in front of her and say, "Boo." Such a mild word for the response it could get and then they'd feast.

He'd heard once that hunters tried not to shoot the running deer. That the adrenaline made the meat tougher, courser. He thought the opposite. The blood was sweeter when they died begging, when they died terrified.

He stood, ready to go, to run, to feed.

Then Cassiopeia yawned.

He stopped and she put a hand over her mouth but he could see her yawn again. "Tomorrow night," he said.

"I'm going now," Paul said.

"She joins us tomorrow," David said. It wasn't a question and Dwayne nodded. That was always the real test and, in his way, David was being kind. _If you're going to have to kill her, get it over with before you're too attached._

She wasn't the first who'd taken the bottle easily enough.

She was the first who'd been his.

"Go," he said. They did, Marko looking back with a vulgar thrust of his tongue in his cheek.

She wobbled on her feet and he grabbed at her. "Long night," she said in what was probably meant as an apology. He just pulled her onto the bed that had been Star's. They'd never bothered to throw away her drapey faux-gypsy bullshit and he yanked at the scarves now with annoyance only to find she'd tied them up with surprising skill. They hung in his face and smelled of dust and the last faded notes of perfume. If he'd loved, or even liked, the woman who'd left them that scent would have made him melancholy. As it was, it just made him wrap the fabric around his fist and pull with enough force to bring it down, along with crumbled mortar and a root.

"Take your boots off," he said.

"I haven't slept with boots off in… in a while," she said. "Safer."

"You're safe here."

She made a rude noise but began to unlace the first boot. He watched her fingers pull the knot loose, then shift the leather ties out so she could loosen it. "I'm in bed with a vampire," she said. "I think that's the opposite of safe."

That didn't stop her from taking her shoes off and curling into a tight ball on the old mattress. He wrapped himself around her from behind and felt her wet hair against his face. It could have been a kiss or a missive from hell. If Star had been dust and rosewater, this one was sulfur from the spring and so much fear. Her heart beat too quickly and he could feel it thudding along his own veins into his own heart. He could taste the way her emotions filtered through her skin and into the air. He'd smelled that often enough on victims: delectable on them, hateful on her. He set a hand along her bare arm and she shivered but calmed and when she rolled and lay her cheek against his chest he tucked himself around her until her breathing steadied and she fell into the real sleep humans had. She was still asleep with the others returned, still asleep when the sun rose and he disappeared into the void of his own rest, sheltered by the cave, sheltering her.

Tomorrow would be another night.

. . . . . . . . . .

 **A/N – CONTENT WARNING: Story contains veiled references to childhood sexual assault. Nothing is graphic and the perp will get what he deserves, but the content is there.**

 _Thank you to breenieweenie for alpha reading this. Her enthusiasm propelled the creation of this along at a breathtaking speed._

 _Lost Boys was probably one of my first fandoms, before I knew the meaning of the word. I have a ring from the carousel in the movie in my jewelry box, removed from the premises when I was a teenager despite signs on the walls saying NOT to steal the brass rings. I have no regrets. Returning to this world to write in it is… rather glorious._

 _To clarify the AU nature of this world: Max is dead, the boys all lived, Star and Laddie took off for parts unknown._


	2. Chapter 2 - The Boardwalk

She woke up before he did. Dwayne hadn't slept lying down in so long that when he woke he shifted immediately into predatory mode. Something was wrong. He should be hanging. It took the sight of the blonde girl - woman, really - sitting cross-legged in their lair, boots back on, dragging cold samosas through the plastic sauce dish before eating them to remind him he'd stayed horizontal on purpose. No one had attacked him. He'd been wrapped around her, whatever she was. She glanced at him, pointed up and asked, "That a vampire thing?" before she went back to eating.

She hadn't left. He was almost surprised by that.

The others were dangling above her head but, with the sun safely below the horizon, they flickered into wakefulness just moments after him. Marko swung down first and snagged the last samosa. "It is," he said. Then he made a face. "You really eating this shit cold?"

"Party time," David said. He landed in a crouch next to her, leather trench flapping around his ankles like the wings of a giant bird. "Who wants to go get something better?"

"Boardwalk?" Paul flung an arm around Marko and the pair of them leaned into one another. "I want cotton candy."

"Boardwalk," David agreed. He gestured toward the exit. "Ladies first."

"I can't afford," she began but David pulled a wad of crumpled bills out of his pocket and she stared at them with eyes far too carefully uninterested.

"Family gets whatever they want," he said. "Isn't that right, Dwayne?"

Dwayne pushed himself up and held a hand out for her. She licked the sauce and grease off her fingers, sucking at the digits with casual indifference that had to be faked because she never dropped her eyes from his steady gaze. He kept his breathing level with effort until she wiped her hand on her pants and accepted his offer of help up. Marko hooted with delight and shoved an elbow into Paul, who, when he met Dwayne's eyes, smirked. Dwayne just said, "Whatever the lady wants." He wasn't going to get into it with them. The lack of inflection in his voice just made Paul snicker. Stupid, he wasn't.

She hesitated at the entrance of the cave and he realized she might have tried to step out after all. She was only half, the sun wouldn't be deadly yet. It wouldn't even be bad, but if she'd moved into the direct light she wouldn't have liked the experience. He took a step out first and looked back. Life with them was a series of challenges. She might as well get used to it. This was the smallest thing and timid vampires didn't survive long.

She cocked her head to the side, recognizing his implicit dare, and took the step out.

"Good girl," David said. "Let's go get that candy, shall we?"

The boardwalk throbbed with life. Teenagers strutted and preened for one another while their slightly older peers looked on with pretend sophistication. Tourists who'd been let out after dark moved stolidly through the crowd, fanny packs and neon shirts marking them as prime targets for the panhandlers. It smelled of spilled soda and grease, with the occasional whiff of vomit from corners where people who'd misjudged their tolerance for the coaster staggered. It smelled of blood.

He couldn't remember how long it had taken to be able to smell the rivers of iron and salt that ran through the veins and arteries of everyone around them. He didn't think she'd notice it yet. Had that sense not fully awoken until after he'd made his first feed? It was hard to remember. It had been so long ago. Or maybe just the year before. Time was an odd thing when you took away the pressure of mortality. Had Star been a month ago, a year, or a handful of years?

Cass leaned against him as they walked like a cat determined to trip you, and when that became sufficiently aggravating he grabbed her and set her up so she was sitting on the half wall between the boardwalk and the drop off to the beach. She laughed and he realized with some shock it was the first time he'd seen her even a little happy. He'd seen her wary and cautious and afraid. He'd seen her reckless enough to down a swallow of blood without stopping to think. He'd seen her so hungry she'd eat anything put in front of her. But here, surrounded by people with easy lives going about their playground, she wrapped her feet around his waist and pulled him toward herself and she looked vibrant.

Was it possible that under all that grime and caution she was a flirt?

David leaned up against the wall next to them and handed money over to Marko. "Go get something," he said.

"You like the boardwalk?" Dwayne asked her.

"I like the energy," she said. "I like the _life_."

"I like the life, too," Paul said. He was watching the crowd go by, looking for that person who would taste sweetest. A girl ran by, shorts barely cupping the curve of her ass, and then a middle-aged matron pulled her purse to the other side of her body as she passed them. Maybe it was the teased hair, maybe the earrings, maybe Paul's mesh shirt and leather jacket. Whatever it was, she didn't like him. Probably didn't like any of them. One vote for her demise.

While Paul looked through the crowd for dinner, Dwayne leaned forward against the woman pressing her heels into him and cupped a hand along the back of her neck. Her smile froze for a split second. He could feel the prickles of fear breaking out along her arms, and even though she forced the delight back onto her face he let go. He could tell it was faked now.

"He likes it when you pull his hair," Paul said. He'd seen it too, then. That sudden tension. Kids with a certain sort of past always recognized one another and he was giving her something she could do to hide that flare of vulnerability. That perception was one of the things you ended up loving Paul for.

Her hands shook just a little as she slid them up his neck and into his hair and she let them rest there, skin on skin, and breathed. The tension seeped out of her as she soaked in their connection. She let a thumb hit against the tooth he had hanging from one ear and he could feel the weight of it as it swung back and forth.

"Want one?" he asked.

Marko chose that moment to return with three sticks of cotton candy. He presented one to David with a little bow, held one out for Cass until she took it with one hand, leaving the other pressed against his skin. Marko finally ripped off a chunk of spun sugar off the last cone of the stuff and handed it to Paul. Dwayne thought he heard one of the khaki-clad college kids mutter, "fags" as Paul took it. He turned and looked at the fool. Short hair. A polo shirt with the collar turned up. A very brief future.

Pity. His parents had probably spent a lot of money on that education he'd never get a chance to use.

When he turned back, Cass had taken a giant bite of the candy and her lips were covered in pink. The fear and memories had been transformed into a mischievous sprite via sugar and he grinned and leaned forward to take a bite of the treat himself. She leaned back and held it out of reach and he had to brace one hand along the wall to try to get far enough forward to take a bite. As they leaned in unison, her back and him forward, his body pressed along hers and she dug her heels in harder to keep herself secure. He could feel her heart beating as he stretched his head out, throat extended and bared, to lick at the candy. He was almost there when -

"I'll share mine."

He straightened and turned at the giggle and came face to face with a group of girls, surely from the college, with crimped hair and bright colors. One even had heels on. He let his eyes drop to the impractical shoes, then raked them up the body of the speaker, his mouth curling in contempt. A smarter woman would have been offended, or afraid. This one cocked a hip to one side and held her own cotton candy toward him while her friends giggled and clustered behind her.

"I don't think so," Cass said. He'd never heard her sound so cold and Marko raised his brows at the tone.

"He belong to you?" the girl asked. It was the sort of invitation that couldn't go unanswered and Dwayne crossed his arms and waited.

"Near enough," Cass said. "Fuck off."

Truth can have an odd ring. Dwayne knew it when he heard it and he looked back at her. Her mouth was set in stubborn anger and the pink left on her lips looked far too alluringly like blood. He'd wanted to kiss her before, when it had been just candy. Now that she'd licked enough of it off to leave just a red tint and a gleam he curled his nails into his palms so the pain would keep him from acting. He blinked, then looked up at the intruder through his lashes.

It made them simper even more.

Marko laughed. He wanted the chase to start now.

Paul began to clap his hands. Three, slow claps sat in the air as the dull, dumb girl in her heels looked at them all, not understanding.

"We can show him a better time," she said.

"A night of such tempting offers," David said. "We'll look for you later. Dwayne's always up for a good time."

"I am," he agreed.

Cass sucked in her breath, but whatever furious, hurt outburst she might have planned evaporated when she looked at Marko. He and Paul were high fiving and David cocked one side of his mouth up in a knowing, teasing smile. "We do have ways of having a good time, Cassiopeia. People like us."

"People like," she started to ask, and then her mouth turned up into a hard, cold smile of her own. "I don't know how," she said.

"It's like riding a bike," Paul said. "You just start and the rest?" He waved a hand as if to say it was too easy to explain.

"I can show you," Dwayne said. "When they leave."

"Invite her to the bluffs," Marko suggested. "She'll go."

"But first, a ride," David said. "Since we have time to kill before little sister's big event."

The line for the Giant Dipper was long and when Cass started to obediently head to the end, Dwayne snorted and pushed her along, David ahead of them, Marko and Paul behind. People muttered pro forma "Heys" and "Watch its" but no one did more than glare as they hopped over the cool, metal barrier meant to keep people orderly and wove and shoved their way to the near front. No one ever did. You had to stop before the corner of the line turned and the attendants could see you. They'd thrown all the boys out before. "No line hopping," was the rule. But two trains later and Dwayne was pulling crumpled tickets out of the inside pocket of his jacket and handing them over to the pimply teenager manning the last gate and swinging Cass down into a seat.

He'd ridden this one so many times his body braced and leaned in anticipation of every corner but she slid along the hard plastic at the first turn and ended pressed against him. "You like it?" he yelled in her ear. The kids ahead of them were shrieking and waving their hands up in blatant disregard of the sign that passed over their head - _keep hands inside_ \- and the car flew down between the white painted wood and her hair flew out behind her.

"I do," she yelled back. "The speed."

He tossed his head back and laughed. The sheer thrill of the movement was good. That she was an adrenaline junky better. They rode the curves and the drops until the train jerked to its final halt and began to trundle its way into the station, the sorrow of the end somehow sharper than usual. He needed to be moving like that again. He needed it not to stop. "She likes to go fast," he said over his shoulder.

"Bikes, then," Paul said. He took off, swinging his way up and out and past the other riders. They'd stashed them away in a cave closer to the bluffs. Too many people, too many cops, too many followers. They'd had to hide them last time they'd been out. But it was an easy walk. Easier flight, but they loped and spun their way through the crowds instead and Dwayne breathed in the energy. Lights blinked, bells went off as someone won a game rigged to let people win just often enough to keep them coming back. You could almost live off the electricity of this place alone.

Marko stopped to grin and nudge Paul and point to a hot dog stand.

 _hot dogs - $1_

 _all meat hot dogs - $2_

 _All beef hot dogs - $3_

"Which are you?" he asked.

"I'm not a cow," Paul said, "but I'm all meat, so that makes me the $2 version."

"Ewww," said a girl standing near them. "Who would buy the $1 one?"

"People who are hungry," Cass said.

The girl turned and studied Cass and immediately sorted her into whichever mental category included combat boots, white eyelet halters, and cheap food. "I've never been that hungry," she said with a toss of her pony tail. People who were hungry, that toss implied, had done something wrong. Buy that $1 hot dog and you might as well brand _failure_ or _loser_ on your forehead. Poverty was always the fault of the poor. Dwayne wrapped an arm around Cass and pulled her closer but it was Paul who responded.

"Maybe you should try hunger some time," he said, "You could stand to lose a little off those thighs." He'd shaped the words into a parody of concern which made them that much crueler. Marko laughed, and even David cracked a smile. Dwayne let his eyes drop to the unfortunate acid washed shorts, belted in at the waist with, god help her, a flap that folded over the belt. They would have been unflattering on anyone. They were especially unflattering on her.

"I don't think the thighs are the problem," he said.

"Learn to dress," Marko advised her before sauntering off.

David stayed long enough to grab her chin in his hand and turn her face to the right and then the left. "It's not the clothes," he said. "She's ugly on her own."

"The thighs don't help," Paul called back and David tossed her chin down and they were that much closer to the bikes and the thrill of coursing over the beach, outracing everything. Go fast enough and you could run away from the world.

"Afraid?" David asked when they pulled the bike out, when she wrapped a hand along Dwayne's shoulder and drew herself up behind him.

"I thought he said we didn't die," she said.

"And you believed him?" David asked, and then roared away, sand kicked up behind him.

Dwayne considered reassuring her but then Marko was gone, and Paul, and she had her arms around his waist and was asking, "You plan to be last?" and it was clear she didn't need him to tell her everything would be fine. He knocked the kickstand up with his heel and bent forward against the wind and everything became the smell of the salt and the sand in his face and the speed. She pulled a hand free to free her face of the tangled mess of his hair, then raised her fist up and let out a hoarse cheer, challenging the world.

This was good.

He curved to the right, bike tipping one way, and pulled around Paul. One down. Marko crouched down over his handlebars, knuckles getting white, as if he could will himself to be faster but the day he couldn't pass Marko was the day he'd suck him off without demanding he return the favor. Cass wrapped herself around him more tightly, melding herself to him to make the smallest drag for the wind to catch and hold that she could. He pushed the accelerator all the way down and the wheels spun and pushed them forward and inch by inch they caught up to Marko.

"Fuckers," he called at them as they passed and Cass turned to blow him a kiss. Dwayne could feel Marko's laughter.

Two down.

He crept up next to David until they were almost, but not quite, even with one another and then eased off the accelerator. David looked over and bared his teeth and Dwayne made the slightest jerk of his chin up, the most infinitesimal baring of his throat, and David looked away again, eyes on the sand, satisfied.

There were rules to this existence.

They'd reached the pier and David slid to a sharp stop under the even deeper shadows next to the thick wood posts, sending up an arc of wet sand. Dwayne passed him, then stopped as well. He swung Cass off the seat, meaning to ask how she'd enjoyed the ride. The answer was obvious, though. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes sparkled. Her hair had tangled into something so reminiscent of the bed that, without thought, without remembering she'd frozen at a nearly identical touch, he grabbed her and kissed her.

She stiffened, then that thrill of electricity that connected them sparked and she grabbed at his hair and pulled hard enough to drag a groan out of him. She broke away and he felt the loss until she whispered in his ear, "So Paul was right."

"He usually is," he said, but if she weren't afraid, if she planned to be _aggressive_ , he wasn't holding back. He used one hand to grab at her head and another to twist her arm behind her, folding her toward him. He'd yield to David but no one else. There were rules, and there was a hierarchy, and she tasted like sugar and a fading echo of sunlight and he was going to lose his mind sucking at that taste. She bit at his lip, but it wasn't to get away, and the combination of the sweetness lingering on her mouth and his own blood made him throb and harden under the torn jeans. Made him want. He pushed the straps of that little halter down her arms and kissed at her neck, her shoulder. He'd reached for the buttons that ran down the front of that shirt, planning to rip them free, when David stopped him.

"Later," he said.

Dwayne took a step backward, keeping his hands loose, his fingers stretching out. Paul nudged Marko with his elbow but that didn't wipe his grin away. David's mouth turned up, one corner slightly higher. "After," he said, the words low and coated with honey. They stuck to you, those words. "After we've dealt with the little sorority girl."

After she knew.

. . . . . . . . . .

 **A/N - The hot dog sign was an actual sign on the Santa Cruz boardwalk in the late 80s. The unfortunate acid washed shorts were mine in my youth. They were, indeed, unflattering.**

 **Much love to breenieweeie and coffeequeen73 for alpha reading this for me.**


	3. Chapter 3 - Dinner

"Why don't you go pick up your little friend," David said. "The bluffs await."

Dwayne took another step back from Cass and adjusted his pants to the sounds of Marko's laughter. "Having a hard time, there?" Paul asked. He shot the other vampire an annoyed look but Paul just cocked his head to the side and gave him a faux innocent look as Marko nudged him with delight.

If they weren't his brothers, he'd have killed them.

"I'll take her up," Paul said with a flick of his eyes towards Cass. "It'll be fine."

She took an uneasy step in Dwayne's direction, clearly unwilling to be separated. "Cassiopeia," David said in warning. When she didn't move he got specific. "Get on the bike with Paul."

Dwayne could see her eyes widen at the force of that command. It wouldn't compel her obedience. Not yet. Not until she fed, but the bond still pulled at you when you were half. Her feet moved toward Paul without asking her brain for permission and she fought to hold herself in place. "You didn't mention that side effect," she said.

"Surprise," David said with the satisfaction of a cat in the cream.

Paul held a hand out and, with a shudder, she gave in to the order and took it, let him pull her up behind him. She held herself with so much tension the stiff lines of her body made Dwayne cringe. Unless Paul drove like a grandmother on her way to church - unlikely - she'd fall off if she sat that way. A fall might give her a quick lesson on how very quickly they all healed but it would still hurt and he was surprised by how much he disliked that idea. He stared at Paul until he twisted his head back and whispered something to Cass that made her smile a bit and, more importantly, relax. She scooted forward on the seat until she was pressed against Paul and wrapped her arms around his waist.

Marko gave him a jaunty wave and they took off. He was left alone.

The boardwalk felt different alone. With his brothers and Cass there he'd been ensconced in a group, moving through the crowd as one, their eternal ties endlessly reinforced with nudges and winks and nods to one another. Now he was the outsider, less welcome on this pavement than even his bike was.

Well, less welcome by most people.

"Cool jacket," said one boy, barely old enough to shave. His eyes had that hunger. They could take him. They could turn him. Dwayne studied him and, under that gaze, he thrust his hands down into pockets, nervous now, and hunched his shoulders. He wouldn't make it if they invited him to a meal, for a ride, for some fun. Fodder for the rush, maybe, but this one would recoil when faced with a body held down, a chin pulled to the side to make that first kill easy.

Bells rang, and girls shrieked, and he thought about buying another cotton candy to taste Cass again as he looked for their target. She'd be here somewhere, half excited he might come back, half sure he wouldn't. It didn't matter to her. Not really. She'd get the same thrill talking about him with her friends that she'd get from an actual tumble down in the dark. He wasn't the first bad boy she'd picked up this way. She didn't think he'd be the last. She only wanted to get a little dirty then go home to her soap and wash him away.

"Hey, found you!"

It was her, crimped hair, high heels, and all, gathered with her own pack mates outside the haunted house. She hit him playfully on the arm. "You're so bad," she said. "I thought you'd forgotten about me."

Dwayne took that hand, pulled her toward his bike with one harsh yank, then softened the attack by bending down to kiss her palm and suck on one finger with slow deliberation. She gasped and looked back at her friends with wide eyes. He decided he would break every one of those fingers later. "I was looking for you," he said. "Hard to find someone in this crowd."

That made her giggle. The sound grated. "Lose the loser?" she asked.

He shrugged. She wasn't worth lying to, but you could skim over a lot of things with silence. "Wanna to go for a ride?" he asked. "Up to the bluffs?"

She hopped onto the bike behind him and waved to her friends. "Catch you later," she said to them with enough triumph to make him like her less. He was surprised that was possible but life was filled with discoveries. One unpleasant one was that she smelled of fried food and Obsession. He wanted her off his bike, away from him, dead at his feet.

He shifted gears, ready to go, ready to deliver her. The friends waved back, a cluster of neon and denim that might as well have been one creature, and he pushed the bike down the stairs, back onto the sand and out into the darkness. She clutched at him as he drove, fast enough the lights and noises were lost within moments and they were alone.

She still didn't have the sense to be afraid.

The cool air bit into his skin as he drove. He pushed into the air, wanting more, wanting to be cleansed by it, wanting the speed. She shrieked. It was probably supposed to be a teasing-I'm-so-cute-in-my-helplessness sound.

She'd be much more attractive when she really was helpless.

When he brought the bike to a halt up on the bluffs, the crash of the waves below seemed very loud in the absence of the roar of the engine. "It's so pretty up here," she said in a breathy voice. "I just love Santa Carla, don't you?"

"It's home," he said.

Home was where his pack was.

David stepped out of the shadows, panther feet crunching on the scruffy resilient plants that grew here, that held back erosion. You weren't supposed to walk on them. Marko faded into existence behind him. Paul swung down from above.

"What… what is this?" she asked, her voice shaking for the first time. "A party?" The uncertainty was delicious. The hope that this was just a little more excitement than she'd anticipated , hung at the edge of her voice. Everyone expects what they're used to and she was used to alcohol and drugs and sex with boys who were just a little bad. Not this.

Only murderers got used to murder. For the murdered, it was always new.

"You could call it a party," David said.

"Party," Marko said. He might have been tasting the words. "I like to party."

Cass had hung back, behind the group of them, but at that she slid around the group. The white of her halter picked up the moonlight and made her into a beacon. Dwayne held his hand out and she ran across the open space between them and took it, tipping her chin up so he could drop a kiss on her mouth. One took benediction where one found it.

"The real question is," David said, "does our Cassie like to party."

"I think she does," Marko said.

And then, as their victim realized for the first time this was bad - this was very bad - they fell on her. It happened fast, the way it always did, and she was on her back on the ground, Dwayne holding her down so he could twist her head to the side when the time came. Marko sat at her feet, one hand on each ankle. She fought, of course. It was part of the fun. She tried to free herself from Marko, kicking her feet hard enough one of the ridiculous shoes came off. Marko just hooted and spread her legs, then closed them up again like scissors. Terror gave her strength but it wasn't enough.

Cass took a shaky step toward the victim and David came up behind her. "You're a monster, Cassie," he whispered, his mouth so near her ear she had to feel the warmth of his breath on her. "Be a monster."

"It's what they called you, right?" Paul asked. His own face was twisted into memories. "Said it was your fault? You asked for it?"

Cass dropped to her knees next to the girl and used a hand to move some of that hair away from her neck, clearing a path. She pushed every motion as though she were caught in the odd resistance some dreams had. The very air might have been thick for her. This was the test so many halfings failed. "Help me," the girl said. She clawed her hands up, trying to free herself from the trap she'd fallen into. Dwayne pushed her down and curled his fingers into her just to cause a little more pain. The girl let out a gasp and a whimper and then stared into Cass' eyes. "Help me," she said again, pleading more desperately this time. She had begun to cry and the tears ran down her cheek, mixing with the running from her nose. "Help me," she said, more softly now.

Was it funnier that she thought the woman she'd called a loser would be an ally, or the idea that, even if she were, the two of them would stand a chance against four full vampires?

Well, three he supposed. He wouldn't be able to move against Cassiopeia, even if she turned on them or fled. His face shifted to show his other side at that thought, and the screaming got louder and higher. She'd slipped into hysteria. He licked at his teeth. That sound always made him hungrier. "Cass," he said. "Do it." He wanted to feed. He wanted to do it now.

"No," the girl said shrilly. "You have to help me, please, oh god, oh god -."

"Because you'd help her?" Paul asked. "Invite the homeless trash back to your dorm. Loan her your shampoo?"

"Paint her nails?" Marko suggested. His face had transformed as well and, as Cass hesitated, Paul shifted too. Only she and David were left looking human. The girl screamed again, and begged, and Dwayne held her down and watched Cass.

"If you're going to be the sort who leads men into perdition," David said so softly the words slid under the screaming and begging, "you might as well enjoy it."

"I will," the girl got out. "Bring you home, you don't have to do this, you don't need them. I can help you."

Cass let the monster out and Dwayne felt the smile bloom at the sight of her face transformed into what she was, into what they all were. "Liar," she said softly, then lunged forward and he yanked the girl's head to the side so Cass could feed for the first time. She sank her teeth into the white neck with its streaks of orange foundation and he let the girl go so he could snap the bones of the fingers she'd set on him without permission. He didn't like to be touched by outsiders. Not ever.

The crunching could still be heard under her screams, under the roar of the feed, under the sound of the four of them, now that Cass had bitten her first victim, descending on the girl and drinking. You never got sated. Not really. There was never enough. A little over a gallon of blood ran through the human body, all of it fire and starlight and life, burning in your mouth, reminding you that you were better, that you were more.

They drank eternity when they fed.

There was never enough.

Never.

Cass lifted her face to look at him, her eyes as wild as he'd seen them yet, then she flew across the body and flung herself against him, her mouth on his before he could even fade back into human. Blood streaked down her chin, that white halter was stained beyond redemption. Her hands struggled with his jacket, pulling it down, pulling it away, wanting to get at him, to touch him. He felt the same frenzy. You did after you fed. He shrugged the jacket off, tossing it away, then shredded the fabric of her top. She had blood dripping down her skin and he licked at it. More, you always wanted more.

Blood on her collar, blood on her throat. He sucked at it, his mouth at her skin, his tongue running in circles over each place he touched. She'd thrown her head back, she was curling her fingernails into his shoulders leaving an arc of red half moons. When he looked up, over her shoulder, David had slid back into his human guise and was wiping blood from his mouth. He pulled a pack of cigarettes from a pocket, tapped one out, and lit it. A long drag, a slow smile, and he leaned against a tree to watch the rest of them. He had a new member of his pack, fully blooded, fully his. Marko had been the last one who hadn't broken at the feed.

It had been too long.

Then Cass bit him, human teeth but still hard enough to hurt, and he snarled and grabbed at her hair and yanked her head to the side. So she liked to bite, did she? He ran the edge of his teeth along the lines of her neck and, when she sucked in her breath and sagged a little in his grasp, he pushed down harder. She shivered and curved herself in toward him and he twisted so he could lie her down on top of the jacket he'd shed.

He reached down to undo the button on the jeans with a sure twist of one hand then paused. There was blood lust but there was also the possibility she didn't know what she was on the edge of. There were things you shouldn't do the first time in a maddened haze. "Cass," he said, and he could hear how hoarse his voice was. "Is this…?" He trailed off, unsure how to ask this.

"I was twelve," she said.

He closed his eyes for a moment at that then glanced over at Paul.

He'd heard.

He propped himself up on one elbow, reached a hand over toward her. "I was ten," he said. He caught her fingers in his and held them. "Ever not that?" he asked.

She shook her head.

Dwayne's hand stilled, then he brought it up to cup her chin. Not now. Later, when she wasn't high on the kill. They had time. They had lots of time. She'd come down enough that she'd started to tremble with the cold and he sat back, folded his legs under him, and pulled her onto his lap. She let out a shuddering sigh and rested her head against his skin. He ran a hand over her hair, then down an arm and waited as Paul and Marko, long past the days of having to talk about history and the scars it left, worked off their own energy and David drew in one long breath on his cigarette after another.

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

He pressed his lips up against her temple and let them rest there. Anything he said would be a promise of death, too obvious to give voice to.

"If you're all done," David said."

"There's a boy, still," Dwayne said. He didn't look over at Paul and Marko. "I want him."

"Family get what they want," David said. He ground his cigarette out under his heel. "Cass needs a shirt."

They all looked at what was left of the shirt their victim had been wearing. "No," Cass said flatly. "Not in my poorest, worst moment."

One picked lock at the back door of a thrift store later and she had a black shirt probably meant to look like a corset but with a zipper up one side and a leather jacket of her own. "She was shivering on the bike," Paul said as he grabbed it and Dwayne looked at him. "Don't be a dick."

Dwayne slid a hand up the back of her neck to rest at the base of her skull and waited for David to jerk his head toward the door and lead them out and back to the boardwalk. The black shirt was a better choice. Black hid stains and blood. It was how the rest of them managed.

Marko picked up a handful of tootsie rolls from a dish by the cash register, tossed the wrapper from the first to the ground, popped it in his mouth, and they left. The boardwalk had just closed, lights clicking out, last patrons heading to cars and up the street in drunken staggers. They found the khaki-wearing dead man with one hand on a wall where he leaned over a woman pretending to care about his opinion on Hungary.

"I'd never thought of it that way," she said. She twirled a lock of hair on one finger and looked up at him as though he were the cleverest man she'd ever met.

"He bothering you?" David asked.

He probably hadn't been. She'd been a little too wide-eyed with her enthusiasm, but one look at them and she was clutching her purse and heading for the parking lot. She knew when to clear out.

"Assholes," the man said. He gave David a shove, and Paul shoved back. Marko moved in just an inch too close on the left and their target skittered right, back toward the shadows, back where doors opened into dingy storage closets filled with toilet paper and brooms.

Marko moved closer.

The man stepped further away. "You shitheads think you're tough," he said. "Just you wait until - ."

David closed his hand over the man's throat and pushed him hard up against the wall. The force shut him up, and he began to claw at the hand holding him. "Be good," David said. He leaned in closer and whispered in the man's ear, "Or we might eat you."

Then he laughed.

It was the mayhem laugh.

"Fucking weirdos," the man got out before David wrenched his head to the side, pulled down the perky collar of his polo shirt, and sank teeth into the man's neck. Hit the right spot and the arterial force pushed blood into your mouth as fast as you could swallow. The first sips were the sweetest, first gulps the most addictive. David took those then tossed the limp body toward Marko who caught it and sucked at the neck, licking the wound with almost desperate eagerness.

One was good.

Two was better.

Paul snagged the next bite, tearing into the man's throat and shaking his head like a dog with a bone as he drank. When it was Dwayne's turn, he bit down and felt the flesh tear under his teeth and the perfect blood, now down to a trickle, drip into his throat, It wasn't enough. He twisted the body so it hung upside down, so gravity would help, and Marko held it for him as he knelt and drank.

Cass had hung back, possibly unsure of her place in this hierarchy and, to be fair, the order they'd drunk in had been nearly backwards this time. Paul gave her a nudge forward and she took a step, then another, then her knees were on the ground and her mouth was at the throat of their victim, her head tipped to the side as she licked and sucked at the wound. Any initial caution disappeared as she grabbed at the head and drank more and more greedily, drawing out the last drops. He stayed behind her and slid his hands along her neck so he could pull her hair back. Blood would show all too well in that pale blonde.

When she couldn't get any more, she fell back with a tiny whimper. Marko tossed the body into the darkest corner of the utility corridor. This one wouldn't get a missing sign. He might get a nice candlelit vigil up at the college. Mauled by animals, the autopsy would declare. A tragedy. A loss. Sometimes there were speeches on how the dead man had been so talented, such a good person. For some reason they always turned out to have volunteered at hospitals. His fellow students would gather and cry, faces pressed into shoulders.

Good pickings, those community wakes.

"Nice choice," David said.

Dwayne watched Cass wipe at her mouth. The red stain disappeared and left her pale. Was she lovelier with the blood on her lips or without. He couldn't tell. "I thought so," he said into the waiting silence.

Marko flicked a tootsie roll at him and he batted it away with annoyance. "Home?" Paul asked.

Home.

Cass slid behind him on the bike, her cheek pressed against his jacket, and one at a time they took off, sated, calling to one another through the wind as they drove.

. . . . . . . . . .

 **A/N - Much love to breenieweeie and coffeequeen73 for alpha reading this for me.**


	4. Chapter 4 - Fairy Wings

Cass ran her fingers along the edge of the wings, longing in her eyes. The shop was one of those horrid places that catered to people too high to care what they spent their money on. T-shirts emblazoned with _Santa Carla_ hung in rows next to racks of scarves covered with tiny mirrors and baskets piled high with snack food.

Marko was palming miniature snickers bars.

"Fairy wings?" David asked. She shrugged but when Paul drooped his wrist into a limp parody of self-mockery, she reached over and hit his hand hard enough that he let out a low whistle and shook it.

"Trying to kill me?" he asked.

"Don't do that," she said.

"Fairy," he said with a shrug.

She looked at him, her hands back on the wings, her fingers tracing out the swirls painted on the fabric. "People think fairies are so sweet," she said quietly. "All fluttery and cute and nice, but they aren't. In stories, they lead people over cliffs and into swamps just for fun."

David threw money down on the counter. "Sound like my kind of creatures," he said. "Take a pair."

The clerk smoothed out the wrinkles bills and twitched them left and right until they stacked up neatly. "There's not enough," he said. His voice squeaked at the end of that when David turned to look at him. "The fairy wings are $19.99," he said. "Plus tax." The last came out in a near whimper as David moved closer to him at the long, glass counter and made a show of looking down at the figurines and jewelry tucked away for safekeeping within in then back up at the boy.

David leaned over and said, "How much did you say they were?"

"$19.99," the boy squeaked.

"Who has money for our Cass?" David asked. He kept his eyes on the clerk as the reek of fear began to seep out his pores. "I don't want her to go without."

Marko pulled three snickers bars out of an inside pocket of his jacket, found a twenty-dollar bill wedged in the bottom, and tossed it down. A dull, brown stain crept along one side, remnants of a long-forgotten meal.

The clerk eyed the candy with trepidation, opened his mouth to say something, then thought better of it. He picked the money up, made change, and slid it towards David. David smiled, baring just the edges of his teeth. "Thank you," he said as he pocketed the change. "Cass. Get your wings."

Cass pulled a pair off the rack, her hand shaking a little. Maybe she wasn't used to presents, or maybe she was smart enough to know David always had a reason for things he did, and it usually involved hurting people. Dwayne helped her slide the wings on. The white lines of the cheap elastic that held it in place looked garish against the black bustier she still wore, and the trailing wings seemed out of place. She moved to glance at herself in the mirror toward the back of the store and Paul deftly moved in the way and shifted her toward the exit. She went to push past him and he blocked her again. Dwayne gave her a more direct shove toward the doorway and she went, though she managed to stomp her foot down on Paul's toes on the way out in a fit of pique he had to smile even if she was wrong.

"We don't reflect," Dwayne murmured in her ear as they slid into the crowd. "Don't be obvious."

Her mouth formed into a silent, "Oh," as she realized. Some things took getting used to. Sleeping during the day was impossible to ignore. The pain of sunlight immediate. Even the urge to feed became second nature almost at once. But that you couldn't eat garlic, that you couldn't go into a home uninvited, that you didn't cast a reflection: those all surprised you again and again. There were things he missed still. He'd liked wild roses, once.

David took her by the elbow and Dwayne stepped very slightly to the side. "Fairy girl," he said. "Time to play."

She blinked at him very slowly, once, then again, and then she grinned with wild, feral delight.

"Go find dinner," David said. "We'll be watching."

The crowd was thinner tonight. It was Sunday. People had jobs the next day. People had classes. People had responsibilities that tied them down, kept them from running through the crowds like she did, a wisp of a girl in black and white who darted and wove until she stopped in front of a group of young men at one of the gaming booths. Dwayne wasn't sure what it was about that particular group that had caught her eye. They looked like every other bunch of dull, normal souls to him, but she'd flitted past college boys and surfers lying about the waves they'd caught and picked this group out.

He glanced at Paul who shrugged. "She still have blood on that shirt from yesterday?" Marko asked.

"Nah," Paul said. "She washed it out in the springs when we got up."

She smiled at one of the men with a fragile, gamine charm Dwayne had never seen her use. It left a bit of a sour taste in his mouth, and Paul stirred uncomfortably next to him, but one of the men stopped throwing darts at balloons and turned to leer at her. Dwayne heard a low snarl.

"You get to eat him later," Paul said. "Chill."

She set a hand on his arm and ducked her head and became, somehow, several years younger. Maybe it was the wings. Maybe it was the curve of her shoulders. She transformed herself from predator to prey and then looked up at the man with so much raw gratitude in her eyes Dwayne wanted to be sick.

"He just promised her food," Paul said.

He bought it for her too. Cass trailed after him after he elbowed a snickering buddy and traipsed over to a fried dough vendor. Dwayne heard himself snarl again as the man handed her the paper plate and Marko snickered at the sound. "Let the girl have some fun," David said.

"Fun," Dwayne said. "Right."

"She is, though," Paul said.

Cass had ripped off a piece of the dough and was holding it in front of her mouth as she looked up at her mark. She laughed at something he said and then scuffed her toe on the ground. The man set a hand on her back then, when she didn't pull away, ran it down over her ass and let it sit there. He had a soft look to him. Dull brown hair, boat shoes. Dwayne glanced at Paul. He'd been so thin when they'd found him, and so angry it was amazing he hadn't immolated himself with the sheer force of his rage. For a year, every victim he'd picked out had looked the same. Dark hair. Weathered skin. Blue eyes.

He'd refused to drink from the original whose lookalikes he'd hunted. David had, and he had, but Paul had stood back and just watched the man die. He'd been less thin by then, but no less angry. He'd spit on the body when they were through. Dwayne had hated a lot of people in his life but never enough to resist the urge to feed. Never enough to stand there and smell the blood and smell the fear and just stare down with contempt at the begging victim until it was over.

Paul's next victim had been a pretty red-head who'd flirted with him in the line for the carousel. He'd never talked about it. Dwayne had never asked.

Cass twisted as if she were uncomfortable, and the guy she was with narrowed his eyes. She tipped her head toward the sand, agreeing to whatever he'd suggested, and began to pick her way down the stairs.

Marko wandered over behind them, just another guy on the boardwalk, wholly uninterested in whatever unpleasant transaction might be going on over fried dough, but as he pretended to be looking at the missing posters he reassured Cass. She could have torn the man's throat out on her own, of course, but she seemed just wary enough to need a reminder family was there. Family was always there. By the time she reached the bottom of the stairs and stepped onto the sand, she was giggling. The sound might have been too young, too fake, too awful but it didn't have any real nerves sitting behind it. Marko ripped one of the signs down, shoved it into a pocket, and they all padded along the sand behind the couple.

He kept his hand on her ass the whole way.

They waited until she was over by the bridge to reveal themselves. "I don't know," she was saying. "I like to have a good time, but - "

"You led me on," he said. He had the nerve to get angry. "That was a bitchy thing to do, girl."

"She's like that," David said. He stepped out of the shadows and snapped his fingers. "Cass."

She took a step away from the mark and brushed her hand over her hips as if cleaning off dirt then crossed her arms.

"She got a price?" the guy asked. "Shit, man, I thought she was just - "

"She does," David said. "Everyone does."

The man reached into a back pocket to pull out his wallet, thumbed through worn bills, held some out. David plucked them from his hand and folded them neatly. No reason not to take cash when offered. Then he tipped his head toward the man. Her victim probably thought Cass had been ordered to get to work, not given permission to go first. She ran a hand along his thigh and he let out a low laugh. "That's more like it," he said, and leaned up against the side of the retaining wall, getting comfortable for what he thought was coming.

Dwayne could hear something ugly come out of the back of his throat when she knelt down, her hands at his waist, fumbling with his belt.

"Oh yeah," the man said. Then she bit and he screamed. It was a gurgling, horrified, wonderful sound. His hands, which had been reaching for her hair, spasmed in the air, and tried to push her away as she ripped through the fabric of his pants, ripped into his thigh, and found the artery that pulsed there with perfect accuracy. She looked up and his scream got louder. She'd shifted, and his blood stained her face.

"Surprise," she said. "But thanks for the fried dough."

Then she put her face back down, lapping and sucking at the blood and Dwayne fell on him as well, and then the rest of them too.

They lasted longer when you left the throat intact, and his death was slower than some, but at last he was nearly gone and David tore the last drops of blood from his neck and they let the body fall. Dwayne bent down to rip the offending hand off, twisting it until the bones snapped, then shoved it in what was left of the man's mouth. He had to break the jaw to get it to fit, but with a little work it went and he straightened up.

Cass was human again, blood running down her neck, her teeth stained red. He grabbed her wrist and yanked her toward him, and she laughed and tipped her face up with so much mischief in her eyes he held back until she could whisper, "Does betrayal always make it taste better?" and then he gave into the bloodlust.

She reached up and ran her bloody hands through his hair and pulled him down to her with sharp force. He grabbed her at that implicit permission to start and shoved her back up against the wall where her victim had leaned, kicking his body out of the way. He pinned her there, leaning against her to hold her in place as she tried to drag his mouth all the way to hers. He wanted her neck, though, and the blood staining her chin, and the way she tugged and pulled on him just made him more determined to hold off until she was desperately hungry.

Hunger made everything better.

He pushed her chin up with his head the same way he would if he were going to feed and sucked at the base of her throat where some of the blood had pooled, then ran a tongue along her collar bones. That pulled a whimper out of her so he did it again, but by then she had her fingernails gouging into the back of his neck and he couldn't stand it any more, waiting be damned, and his mouth was on hers.

The waves slapped against the sand with a steady and quiet lap, recede, lap, recede as he lost himself in the sweetness of this. He still didn't understand the way she pulled at him. Still didn't understand the way even the slightest touch of skin against skin felt electric. But, oh, did it make this better than with even the most willing and eager girl he'd ever known, than with even the closest of brothers.

David cleared his throat.

Dwayne reluctantly eased Cass down. When he turned, he saw Paul zipping his fly and Marko rather casually brushing sand off his knees. They all stood, shaking off the post-feeding haze, until Cass said, "I have blood on my shirt. Again." The peevish, petulant tone made Marko laugh and that broke the spell.

"Go rinse it out at home, girl," he said. He sniffed at himself. "I could use a bath after that one too. Bleh."

Bikes were fetched, she pulled herself up behind him, and Dwayne kicked the stand up, ready to go, but when he looked over at David, waiting for the signal, he was taking a sheet of paper from Marko and nodding. "You all go," he said, and slipped the paper into a pocket. "I'll be out late."

"Beer?" Paul asked.

"Bourbon," Dwayne said, and Paul gave a quick two-fingered salute before he tore off toward town and a liquor store sure to judge his hair and his boots even as they took the money he handed them. Everyone, as David had said, had a price.

At the caves Marko stripped down, tossing boots to the floor, leather chaps over them, then pants shimmied off and flung in a pile with his jacket. He frowned at his current shirt, made a face, and threw it down. That one would disappear, replaced by another one in his endless line of white tees. Vampires didn't exactly go to the laundry and stand around with the good people of Santa Carla, fishing quarters out of their pockets for the machines and asking if anyone had extra detergent they could spare.. When things got ripe, they moved on.

Dwayne had his own jacket and boots off and his hands at the button of his jeans when he realized Cass had stopped in the entry to this odd little cavern with its spring and was hanging back. He jerked his head toward one of the old concrete pylons that served as good bench when you needed to unlace things but she still hesitated.

Marko had flung himself, naked, into the water, thrown his head back, and groaned. "This is the life," he said, and stretched his arms out along the edge of the spring. "Eat a good meal, have a good soak."

"Cass," Dwayne said. "You have blood in your hair."

She reached up to touch it, then edged forward so she sat at the very edge of one of the pylons and began to unlace her boots. She set first one aside, then the other, then took off the wings. Her hands hesitated at the zipper on her top before pulling it down and wriggling out of the tight fabric. She had a tank under it, once white, now stained from the feed. She took a deep breath, seemed to steel herself, then pulled it off with one quick motion.

"Damn," Marko said. "Nice tits."

She glared at him.

"Hey," he said, holding his hands up in a gesture that would have been surrender if he weren't smirking quite so broadly. "Not like tits are usually my thing but I recognize a good pair when I see them."

"Because you eat them," she said.

He shrugged. "Sometimes you want the crunchy bits, sometimes the squishy bits."

Dwayne slid down into the water and closed his eyes. You always ended up smelling of rotten eggs after this, but it was worth it. The heat soaked into his skin and down into his bones and drew everything down into languid ease. He could hear Cass pulling off her pants and walking with deliberate steps until she stepped in after him. "Rinse your hair," he said without opening his eyes. He wanted to hold off this first look at her as long as he could. He wanted to savor the anticipation.

The water splashed as she dipped her head down, then again as Marko batted water at them both. Dwayne flipped him off, eyes still closed, but then Cass' foot had brushed against his and, remembering the anticipation of Christmas morning, he peeled open one eye. He remembered the anticipation and also the inevitable letdown that followed. Christmas had always been a disappointment. You saw ads on the television showing other people's homes filled with tinsel and paper. That wasn't what it had been like for them. His mother had put up a tree once, and he'd cut construction paper into circles to try to look like ornaments. It hadn't worked.

Cass was not a disappointment. She had her arms crossed over her breasts and the rest of her was hidden under the water, but there she was: pale skin, a scar running along one shoulder, jaw set defensively. "Well?" she said. The word was a wall. It dared him to say anything. It expected rejection or, maybe, worse than rejection, the half-compliment that really put you down, that kept you in your place. The coy 'you'll do' that let you know you weren't really that special.

He leaned over and nipped at her lip. "Marko's right," he said. She unbent just a little, and he ran a hand down her back along the nodules of her spine. Her skin was magic, spreading whatever intoxicant she was through him and he pulled her closer just so he could touch more. She shuddered, then pulled one hand off her chest and set it, oh so tentatively, on his thigh.

He might as well have been fourteen again. How could such a small thing command so much attention?

"Relax," he said when she tensed even more. His mouth brushed her ear. "It's just a bath."

"We don't bite," Marko said.

She actually gaped at him at that, then laughed, and then she was splashing him back. Her self-consciousness might not be gone, but it was less. By the time Paul appeared, bag in hand and boots off in seconds, she and Marko were in a full-fledged water fight while he sat back and watched. It wasn't bright in here, and the fire that lit the place caught the water that slid down her neck and chest as she moved and turned it into glitter. He wanted her so badly he thought he might explode. He wanted to watch her ride one of his brothers. He wanted and wanted and wanted and none of it was going to happen tonight.

He took a deep breath.

They had eternity.

"I bring tiny bottles of bourbon," Paul said.

"Tiny?" Marko asked.

Paul held up one of the little train bottles and Dwayne snorted. "That's barely enough to wet your throat," he said.

"Well, I have lots of them," Paul said. "There was a sale. But if your majesty can't be bothered, more for me."

He tossed one to Marko, who unscrewed the lid and threw back the whole of the contents in one swallow, shook his head, and let out a delighted "oof."

Dwayne held his hand out and took the first bottle Paul handed him without a word. Cass seemed less sure. "I've never," she said as her fingers closed around the bottle. "Alcohol bites like the serpent."

"It does what?" Marko asked, obviously completely taken aback. Dwayne felt the same surprise. It was odd to see a woman who'd been drenched in blood not an hour before seem uncertain about something as trivial as a drink.

"It bites like a… a viper," she said. Her voice trembled a little and she hadn't moved to open her drink. "It leads you to the devil."

"Hell, yeah," Paul said. "That's the point."

"Oh, honey," said Marko. "You're already here. We are the devil. You might as well enjoy the spread."

She twisted the top off and sniffed at the contents. "You don't have to," Paul said but she shook her head and a defiant scowl took the place of her hesitation.

"Why should he get to take something else from me?" she asked, and drank the whole thing in a series of gasping swallows. She threw the empty bottle down and Marko raised a fist into the air and hooted with delight.

"Another one?" he asked.

"Why not?" She held her hand out imperiously and Paul set another one of the miniature bourbon bottles in it. She downed that one just as quickly.

Paul threw Dwayne a worried look. He nodded and tugged her a little closer. You couldn't go from teetotaler to two shots in rapid succession and not end up very, very drunk. They couldn't die, so she wasn't exactly at a risk for drowning, but slipping under the water and being unable to breathe wouldn't qualify as one of life's better experiences.

"Where's David?" she demanded, apropos of nothing. Dwayne raised his brows and shrugged. David came and went as he pleased. He'd be back by sunup. Until then, maybe he was off draining a preschool. Maybe he was setting things on fire. Who cared?

"Top secret head vampire stuff?" Paul asked with the same indifference. "Above my pay grade to worry about that shit."

"There's others?" Cass asked.

"Oh, yeah," Marko said. He opened another bottle, drank it, and tossed the empty again. "Tons. But who cares?"

Dwayne distracted her from any tedious pursuit of David and his endless crap by dragging her mouth to his. One hand on her back, one at her head, and this time the kissing was slow. This time, without the rush of the kill driving them, he settled down to enjoy what had always been a prelude in the past. How young had he been the last time he'd kissed a woman and not been counting the minutes until he could get her pants off?

Time was so vague. It was hard to know.

She was on his lap, hand trailing fire and magic over his skin as she felt along the planes of his chest, when Dwayne heard the tread of boots come in, stop behind his head. He didn't turn until David squatted down.

"So," he said. "Ellen."

Cass froze.

Dwayne turned to look at the missing poster David had unfolded and held out for them to see. Cass looked back at him from the bad black and white photocopy. She was eighteen. He hadn't thought to ask. She was from Gilroy. That was a bit funny. She was wearing a loose shirt in the photograph someone had picked for this missing sign, and had hunched her shoulders in such a way it hung forward, obscuring any hint of the breasts Marko had so admired earlier, but it was undoubtedly her. She was Ellen Grace Johannessen. Missing. Missed.

She looked up at David with raw fear in her eyes but defiance in her voice. "I'm not going back," she said.

. . . . . . . . . .

 **A/N - Much love to breenieweeie and coffeequeen73 for alpha reading this for me.**


	5. Chapter 5 - The Plan

"Ellen." David made a show of looking back at the missing poster. "Not a flattering look for you, that shirt. Is that a giant pink flower with glitter on it?"

She moved to snatch the paper out of his hand, but he pulled it out of reach with a tsking sound. "Looking young sometimes helped," she said when he continued to regard her.

Paul climbed out and, as the water ran down his skin, looked over David's shoulder at the poster. He twisted his mouth, then shrugged. "Well," he said. "We go to Gilroy and kill him. Easy enough to fix."

"Easier than that," David said. "He's in town. I guess when Ellen here came over the wire as missing, one of the good souls at the police station remembered her and gave him a call."

"Then let's go," Marko said. "Tasty snacks all around."

"Sun's up soon," David said, a refusal that was absolute. "Tomorrow is soon enough."

Despite the warmth of the water, Cass had started to shiver and Paul found a towel that had been almost clean fairly recently and tossed it over. Dwayne nudged her out and started to dry her off, but she snatched the near rag out of his hand and began to swipe at the water on her skin with short, angry movements. David straightened up and watched her. "The real question is," he said, "Do you want to do the honors, or would you prefer one of us do it."

She stopped her violent scrubbing at her skin, but before she could answer Dwayne said, "I'll do it."

She glared at him with her jaw clenched so tightly to prevent trembling that she'd end up with a headache. Paul tossed him a towel and he wiped himself down. When she threw her own rag at him and said, "I can do it," he shook his head.

"I can," she insisted, and now she really was starting to cry. Paul disappeared, back into the main room of their crumbled home, and Dwayne grabbed her hands.

"If the woman who made me wear a dunce cap on my head in sixth grade comes to town, you may kill her for me," he said levelly. He didn't think she would. She had to be dead by now. She'd been so ancient he'd wondered how anyone thought to let her teach though, of course, his miserable school had taken what they could get and what they could get had always been the dregs. "I want yours."

"Aww," Marko said. "It's true love."

Dwayne flipped him off.

"Promises, promises," Marko said.

Paul returned with, of all things, fuzzy pajamas in his hand. "Here," he said. "From the stash."

"They have baby ducks on them," Cass said with false horror, but she took the soft shirt and pulled it over her head. David slipped out, off to hang and sleep, and Marko after him, but Paul stayed and, when she was dressed again, he pulled Cass into a hug. Dwayne bit back a smile. Maybe Paul had thought she'd be more comfortable wrapped up in clothes, but he'd managed to forget he was still a very naked vampire. It wasn't a thing most people found reassuring.

On the other hand, a thing of beauty was a joy forever.

Paul whispered something into her ear and, whatever it was, it made her laugh. The laugh was shaky, but real enough. "I hadn't thought of that," she said. "Really? So, I can still have garlic ice cream?"

Dwayne snorted and Paul made a face that suggested he shared that opinion. Garlic was bad enough but what kind of horrible monster would put it in ice cream? "No, it's good," Cass insisted. She had to hitch the pants up as she walked back to the bed that had already become hers. It took a while to get used to the hanging to sleep thing. You had to break the habits of a lifetime. She'd get there.

"I think you're crazy," Paul said as he held the last gauzy thing that still hung half-askew over the bed. How had that woman hung so many of these? Cass climbed in. Dwayne and Paul both followed and Dwayne quirked his brows up.

"Just for comfort," Paul said quietly.

That was even less believable than garlic ice cream.

"Every year," Cass was saying as the pair of them linked hands behind her head and she yawned with the pressure of the dawn. "They have the big garlic festival in Gilroy and there's garlic ice cream and some dumb reporter makes a show of eating it and acting surprised it's good for the camera."

"Take Marko," Dwayne said. There were a lot of things he'd do for family, but a rural agricultural fair about a food everyone thought would kill him was off the list, even without the threat of horribly flavored ice cream. "Sounds like something he'd like."

Dwayne wrapped his free arm around her and met Paul's eyes above her head. "Gross," he mouthed silently, and then the sun began to rise and they all sank into the sleep of death.

. . . . . . . . . .

When he woke it was to the same panicked feeling of the day before. Lying down to sleep was just wrong. Paul snorted when he jerked himself upright. "You too?" he asked. He had propped himself on one elbow and was lazily tugging at Cass' hair with the other hand so whatever disorientation he'd had when he'd first woken had already passed. She mumbled something incoherent into the sheets then, when he just tugged harder, rolled over and shoved at his hand.

"Cut it out," she said.

He grinned at her and reached over to tug one lock even harder. "Make me," he said. She sat up, clearly intending to hit him, but the movement pulled the sheet down and made it obvious that Paul hadn't bothered to pull on anything between their time in the spring and following her into bed. Perhaps the alcohol had made that seem less shocking before they'd slept but now that she was awake and sober she froze at the sight of all that skin. The long expanse of Paul's abdomen disappeared beneath sheet but there was no question his nudity went all the way down.

Dwayne spared a moment to be thankful for vampire healing prowess and the way the after effects of alcohol disappeared as quickly as cuts and bruises. A hangover free life was not a thing to complain about. He much preferred admiring Paul without a headache to spoil the experience.

"I," Cass said then stopped. "Uh," she tried again. "You're not wearing anything."

"Dwayne is no less naked than I am," Paul said. She spun to look at him and Dwayne lifted one hand in a short wave then laced his fingers behind his head and waited to see what she'd do. She narrowed her eyes at him and then twisted back to look at Paul as if he'd somehow be more help. He wasn't. He just reached over, and yanked on her hair again, all with one of his 'I dare you' smirks. She grabbed at the offending hand and he pulled it back and, in her lunge to grab it, she ended up toppling over onto his chest.

"Hi," he said. "Come here often?"

Dwayne snickered. She twisted, gave him a look that tried to kill, then sniffed, turned back to Paul and kissed him. It was a short kiss, more of a peck than anything else, but she looked utterly triumphant at how that tiny moment stunned him.

Paul's moment of shock didn't last. He slid his hands along her back under the ridiculous flannel duck shirt then pulled her up against him. She shifted and adjusted until she'd managed to tuck herself into the crook of his arm, then lifted her face to his. Paul brushed his nose against hers, a small gesture that earned him a genuine smile, then lowered his mouth. The kiss might have been gentle at first - Paul might have meant it to be gentle - but soon his fingers were digging into her skin as he tried to get her closer, as he tried to keep himself under control.

Dwayne let them be for a moment, then took one thumb and ran it along her spine. She gasped at that, and he moved closer so he could do it again, then used his hand to lift her shirt and pressed his mouth against her lower back. The magic that connected them sparked and he shoved his head hard into her at that shock, then moved his tongue along her skin until he was at the curve of her hip. The more contact they had, the more he felt the pull that had drawn his eyes to her on the beach. Touching her burned with glory and he reached a hand out to press it against Paul. He needed to confirm it wasn't him, he hadn't gone mad somehow. Paul's thigh felt as solid under his palm as it always had but, for all the lust that spiraled up, it was as mundane a touch as it had always been. He wanted Paul. He'd be happy to fuck Paul. But it wasn't the same. Paul didn't scrape at his soul with teeth and claws.

"Oh, come on," said Marko.

Dwayne picked his head up and there Marko stood, fully dressed, a bag of marshmallows in his hand.

"I never get invited to the good parties," he said.

"That's because you smell," Paul said, but he let Cass go and flopped back. "What's the plan?"

"Wait until daddy dearest is dead asleep at his hotel, then…." Marko mimed biting.

"Stepfather," Cass said. They all looked at her, and she repeated, a little more firmly, "He's my stepfather,"

Marko shrugged. "Girl, we'll kill your whole family if you want. Doesn't matter to me."

Dwayne used his foot to shove Paul out of the bed and, as he stalked across the room, Marko whistled appreciatively. Cass began to sort through the boxes of clothes, eventually settling on a white top with enough tiny hooks he'd probably end up ripping it off rather than trying to undo all those little catches. It made her look like a hippy bride with white eyelet and flowers embroidered on it, or it did until she pulled on the rest of her clothes. So few weddings included heavy boots though he rather liked the contrast.

Cass hesitated once she was done. "What if he," she began to ask.

"Cries like a little girl?" Paul asked.

"No," she said. "He's just... he's so much bigger than I am."

Dwayne doubted he was really that much bigger. Some people had a knack for making themselves take up space. Besides, even if he were bigger than Cass - hardly a difficult feat - he doubted the man was that much taller than he was.

"Won't matter," Paul said. "Superhuman strength, flying. It's not just immortality. You could rip his arms off."

"Oh," she said. Then she looked far more pleased. "That's good then."

Clothes on, boots on, they climbed on their bikes. "Build a fire," Marko said, "toast a few marshmallows, attract girls like moths, pick out a meal."

By the time that was done, Cass' stepfather should be soundly enough asleep he'd assume in his sleep-addled haze that anyone knocking on the door was housekeeping, they could get an invitation into his room, and that problem would be solved. It had been considerate of him to come looking. They'd had to travel to take care of Paul's problem.

Plus, who didn't like roasted marshmallows? Certainly, the girls who clustered around as Marko flirted with them didn't turn any of them down. Cass laughed as they wiped goo from their mouths, and told one she had great hair, and another that she liked her shirt. She made them look safe. How dangerous could they be with her in their midst? Dwayne wrapped his arms around her and they stood together, her holding a stick toward the flame, him holding her.

David sat a little away from all of them on a washed-up log, a beer in his hands. When he crooked his finger, Dwayne and Cass left the two others to their fawning, giggling would-be-friends and sat next to him. "Having fun?" he asked.

Dwayne shrugged. "Got another one?" he asked, tipping his head toward the bottle.

David finished off the beer, tossed the bottle aside, and wiped his mouth. "No," he said. "Drink one of them if you're thirsty."

Dwayne glanced back over. One girl had her hand on Paul's arm and was letting him feed her a marshmallow. She looked like she'd taste of too much perfume. "I'm saving my appetite," he said.

A low snarl came out of Cass' throat. It might have been a reaction to what he was waiting for, but he suspected it was just that he didn't need to ask her opinion of Paul's newest friend and her touchy-feely ways. Well, he agreed. Pickings were thin tonight. "Relax," he said. "I don't think he'll be bringing her home."

David pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit it. The end glowed, a miniature echo of the leaping flames. "Jealousy looks bad on you," he said. Another long inhale and then he added, "Or is it the girl you want?"

Cass' shock passed almost as quickly as it appeared. "I think I'll keep food and… and… and sex separate, thank you very much."

"Suit yourself. If you want to add a girl though, keep an eye out."

She was definitely keeping an eye on the girls. "We need music," one said as she made an awkward gyration with her ass she surely meant to be sexy. "Needs to be a real party."

"Next time," Marko said. He must have felt the force of Cass' irritation at their over the top flirting because he puckered up and blew her a kiss. The smirk behind that softened her mood and she curled against Dwayne's side as they watched the fire burn down, the lights of the boardwalk click off and the girls disappear, waving goodbyes and insisting Marko and Paul visit them.

"Is that an invitation to your house," Marko asked a girl with bleached hair and hoop earrings.

"Oh, totally," she said. She even found a pen in her purse and wrote the address for him on the back of a receipt from Hot Dog on a Stick. "You can come into my room any time."

"Say, 'I invite you into my house,'" Marko said with one finger on her chin. "I don't want to not be a gentleman."

Her giggle made Dwayne want to tear her head off, but she dutifully recited, "I invite you into my house," before she flounced off with her friends, casting backward glances at the boys who waggled their fingers at her.

"A bit much effort for one blonde," David said as he stood up. "Shall we go?"

Paul kicked sand over what was left of the fire. "Fly?" he asked.

"The Hitching Post Inn is cross town over by that hellfire church," David said. "Flying's faster."

Cass looked a bit panicked. "Flying?" she asked. "How?"

"Fairy dust?" Paul suggested. Dwayne coughed into his hand to smother the laugh that would surely piss her off.

Marko didn't bother to hide his own snicker, but added, "If you weren't constantly sleeping with these assholes on top of you, you'd wake up on the ceiling. Flying is what we do."

"Clap if you believe in fairies," David said. They all looked at him blandly and he shrugged. "Just think happy thoughts, Cass."

"Like murdering your step-father," Paul said.

It was as natural as shifting to eat, despite their snark, and with a push of her toes into the ground and her eyes screwed shut, Cass bobbed into the air. When she didn't come down she risked a glance at the sand and poked her foot down a bit. "This isn't possible," she said, "Physics and gravity and - "

"You're an undead creature of the night," Paul said. "Try to be a little less pedestrian." Dwayne tried to hide another laugh, but she heard that one and crossed her arms and glared at him. A sulking, irritated woman in a halter top probably shouldn't have been a turn on, but she was. He reached up, meaning to haul her down to take advantage, but she figured out how to flit herself higher into the air and darted out of reach.

"Catch me," she said.

A better invitation would be hard to come by, but before he could take her up on that, David spoke, and the annoyance in his voice stopped any games.

"If we're done playing school, can we go?"

They did, flying high enough to avoid the streetlights and low enough to avoid getting backlit by the moon. The Hitching Post was miles away from the beach and the sort of place where families, lured by the low prices and ignorant of the traffic near the boardwalk, booked rooms for week long vacations. As cheap hotels went, it was pretty clean. Bright lights lit the parking lot and a sign with a drawing of a cowboy advertised that they had rooms with kitchens and a pool. Dwayne could hear the outraged screams of a baby from one room and the dull grunting of a man whose wife probably despised him even as he thrust into her.

He hated people.

The man finished with a mumbled gasp thanking Carol. "That was over fast," Paul said.

Dwayne suspected that was how the unfortunate Carol preferred it. Perhaps when they were done with Cass's problem they could knock on that door, get in, have seconds. The papers would speculate that Carol's husband had been driven mad by his worthless, impotent life and gone on a murder spree.

"Marko," David said.

"On it." The lights went out, one by one, as a fist smashed into them. The tinkle of falling glass came and went, and David led them to one of the doors in the row. Cass flinched when she saw the car parked in front of it, and Marko casually pulled a knife out of one pocket and scraped it along the Maxima's perfect paint.

"A Datsun," Paul said with contempt for all boring vehicles everywhere. "Figures."

David knocked on the door. There was no answer. "Mr. Williams," he said. "This is the front desk."

Still no answer.

He shoved Cass toward the door. "Daddy," she said. "It's Ellen. Can I come in?"

When there was no answer to that David hammered on the door so hard someone yelled at them to be quiet. "Weird," Marko said. "I thought he wanted her back."

David glanced down the row of doors then, when it was clear no one was around, picked up one foot and slammed it against the door. Vampire strength had its uses, and the door gave way. He stepped carefully over the threshold and looked around. Then he walked across the room and nearly ripped off the door to the bathroom.

"No one home?" Paul asked.

"Cass," David said. She obediently went into the hotel room, Dwayne behind her. Marko flicked the light switch on and they all blinked in the sudden glare of the fluorescent. The green walls loomed at them. The cheap paint over concrete tried to make the room seem cheerful and only succeeded in making it look like a prison for psychotics. "Are these his things?" David asked.

Cass flipped over the lid of a suitcase with far too much caution and poked a finger through the contents. Corduroy pants. A t-shirt declaring his love for the 49ers. A denim jacket. "Yes," she said.

"Then, where is he?" David asked.

Cass shrank back under the fury of that question. Dwayne stepped toward her to shelter her, but his eye caught on the sheet of hotel stationary left out on the counter in the small kitchenette. He tipped his head toward it and David picked it up.

He read it and his face twitched in fury, fangs appearing and disappearing before he crumpled the note in his hand and inhaled through his nose in a struggle to get himself under control.

"He's not here," he said.

"Noticed that," Paul said. "Where is he?"

"With the Widow Johnson," David said.

Dwayne sucked in his own breath. That wasn't good. "Did she?" he asked, not even wanting to finish the question. Damn that woman for interfering in things that weren't her concern. Did she think that because David wasn't Max they were weak? Did she think they would tolerate her going after their marked prey?

"So she claims," David said. He turned to Cass. "Is he the sort to feed easily, or will he break?"

"Oh no," Marko said. "Oh, come on."

"I don't know," Cass said. She'd started to shake and Dwayne dragged her into a tight hold. "If he thought they were sinners," she said. Her mouth was pressed against his skin and he felt the words as much as heard them. "Maybe."

"That bitch," David said. He threw the crumpled note to the ground. "Let's go."

Paul took a moment to stop in the hotel bathroom. "What are you doing?" Marko asked.

He was stealing the towels.

The luckless Carol didn't last the night. Her husband was a beggar, though, and that was always fun, and he was stupid enough he invited Cass in when she said her father didn't seem to be in his room and could she use their phone. They made him watch them kill Carol first, and he wept and blubbered the whole time. The frustration that ran through David at their failure licked at all of them, and they tore through flesh trying to appease his - and their - moods.

"But I helped you," were the man's last words before Cass finally ripped his throat out.

Paul grabbed a washcloth, ran some water over it, and wiped his mouth before passing the scratchy white square around. "That was good," he said.

Cass let out a shuddering sigh. "Yeah," she said. She flicked a glance at Dwayne, but David shook his head before any of them could ride out the post blood-lust haze.

"At home," he said. "The Widow might be watching."

Paul grabbed the towels from this unit too as well as Carol's can of aqua net. Waste not, want not.

. . . . . . . . . .

 ** _A/N - Much love to breenieweeie and coffeequeen73 for reading this over for me. Breenie found a major canon continuity error so I am very indebted to her._**


	6. Chapter 6 - A Slight Complication

Paul flung himself down on the ratty sofa in their cavern, blood still on his hands, his mouth set in a hard line. Dwayne kept his own face impassive as he bent down to pull off first one boot then another. It took more self-control than he wanted to admit to stop himself from flinging one of them against the wall and screaming. It was fun to be a vampire. Fun, fun, fun, until an old woman stuck her shriveled, unwanted fingers into their games. Fun, until their chosen victim was snatched out from under them. Fun, until Cass stood by her bed, arms wrapped around herself, drenched in the blood of the wrong man.

Stupid, worthless Carol and her stupid worthless husband hadn't begun to make up for losing tonight's game. He wanted to go through the line for the pathetic tilt-a-whirl and rip one head off after another, taking a sip from each victim and then moving on. He wanted to leave mayhem and destruction behind him. He wanted to see the world bleed. Maybe that would quiet the tingles that crawled across his skin. Maybe that would keep him from tearing at his own flesh to rip away the failure.

Marko began to unbutton his pants and David cleared his throat. Marko turned, face suddenly cautious and blank and David regarded him for a long, silent moment, then stalked off without a word, going to burn away the oil of his own rage elsewhere and alone. Marko hid the flicker of relief. "He's been a dick since Michael," Paul said, offering an excuse they would all pretend to believe. "Lost love and all that."

David had been born a monster, and when violence caught up with him he would die one. One thwarted affair hadn't turned him into who and what he was. Dwayne caught Cass' hand in his and yanked her closer. "I'm going to kill him," he said. "I'm going to rip him apart one limb at a time."

She reached a hand up to wipe at the blood on her face and he caught the wrist. Her jaw had begun to tremble. Aftershock, maybe, or fear. Adrenaline crashes remained a thing and none of them were unfeeling. Not even David. Not even him. He bent down and licked at the dried smear of red. Iron, earth, and pain. He pushed his nose into her cheek, and that made her sag against him. "So much for superhuman strength being my advantage," she said so softly he could barely hear it.

"Fuck him," Paul said from the couch. Even if he hadn't heard what she'd said, her demeanour was all too clear. "Making us track him down. Bastard. We'll make it slow."

Dwayne twisted to look at him. Marko had dropped to his knees and had one hand down his own pants and another fumbling with Paul's buttons. It was a rerun. They'd spent a hundred nights - maybe a thousand - that way, and he had other things on his mind besides voyeurism, but when he turned his attention back to Cass, her eyes were wide and she didn't seem to know whether she wanted to stare or look at anything other than the pair of them.

He laughed. "Welcome to hell," he said, his voice low and hot near her ear. "We do all the sins, not just wrath." He pulled her in front of him and wrapped one arm around her waist, holding her in place, and used the other to pull her hair out of the way so he could nuzzle at her neck and taste the spatters of blood that remained. It was what they were. If you were going to be so damned you burned at the kiss of holy water, so cursed you couldn't enter a true house of any god, you might as well enjoy it. She watched the others enjoy it until he'd so distracted her she wrenched herself around and grabbed at him. She still had blood under the nails she dug into his neck as she pulled him to her. She bit at his mouth, and yanked at his hair, and he barely managed to shrug off his jacket before he ripped her soaked halter to shreds, before he raked his own hands down her back, leaving streaks of red in their wake.

He could still feel the way she tensed, though, when he ran a hand under the curve of one breast.

He was going to kill him.

He picked her up and carried her to Star's bed - to her bed - and set her down on the edge then knelt at her feet. He untied one boot very slowly and waited for her to say no, waited for her to need the safety of sleeping in her shoes. When she just ran a shaking hand through his hair, he loosened the laces and pulled it off and set it to the side with the same control he'd used to take off his own. He rested his cheek against her knee as he took off the second and peeled away socks. A kiss to the outside of her knee, another kiss to the denim of her jeans where it clung to her thigh, and then he pressed his hands into her shoulders and lowered her down. She'd closed her eyes and had braced herself.

He ran a hand down her arm. "Tell me yes," he said.

That made her open her eyes and look at him, confusion writ plain.

"Tell me what you want," he said. "That and no more."

He had eternity.

"Kissing," she said. It was an embarrassed, soft word, followed by a rapid, "I'm sorry, I know I'm… this is - "

He stopped that by following her instructions. He could hear the sharp gasps of Paul coming apart under Marko's mouth, and Marko's own release, and the scuffle of the the pair of them hooking themselves into the ceiling to hang until the next sunset. He wrapped an arm around Cass, pressed his mouth into her collar bone, and listened to the sighs as he touched her and counted each gasp a triumph.

. . . . . . . . . .

"What's the new plan?" Paul asked. He hadn't bothered to swing down yet and his hair covered most of his face as he hung, bat-like, from above. Cass had knelt down over the boxes of clothing and was discarding one option after another with a grimace. The leather bustier she finally picked out couldn't have been further from the sparkly shirt she had on in her missing photograph.

"Nice," Marko said. He fished an eyeliner out of some misbegotten pocket and began to do her eyes. With mirrors being right out, you adapted. The dark shading made her eyes larger.

"Only whores paint their faces," she said. She sighed. "Wish I could see what it looks like."

"Water works a little," Dwayne said. Still water showed bits and pieces of their reflections. Not enough to feed vanity or do makeup, but a puddle and a streetlight worked where silver backed mirrors never would.

David was on his third cigarette. He'd lit them, one after another, stood in the mouth of their lair, and waited for true darkness. "We hunt," he said in answer to the question. Trust David to make them wait for a response.

Dwayne laced up his boots. More details would be forthcoming. Or they wouldn't. It didn't matter because sooner or later the corduroy pant wearing, Datsun driving dead man would cross his path and, when he did, Dwayne planned to rip his head off his neck. If David had a way to get them there sooner, great.

David dropped his cigarette down and ground it under his toes. "We're going to be very visible and very, very good," he said.

"Good?" Marko asked.

"Not bad enough to get kicked off the boardwalk," David amended. "And our Cass'll wander away every night, money in her fist as she picks through stores and we head off, bored."

"Bait," Dwayne said.

"Then he sidles up to her and we kill him?" Paul asked.

David shook his head. "We're going to burn that bitch's lair to the ground," he said.

Dwayne opened his mouth to say no, they didn't even know where it was, that was more than using her as bait on the boardwalk or beach where he could see her. That was sending into danger on her own, sending her to the hideout of someone so much older than David that who knew what she could do. Before he could say a word, Cass said, "I want to kill him."

David gave her the lopsided grin. "I was hoping you'd say that, sweetheart."

"Boardwalk, then," Marko asked.

"Late night trek to Marko's new girlfriend?" Paul asked.

"Both," David said.

The boardwalk throbbed with life. The pounding rhythm of feet on pavement and screams mimicked the hearts beating in all these people. The smells of soda and grease almost hid the sharp scent of blood cutting the air from a skinned knee or sliced finger. Cass inhaled and he settled a hand on the back of her neck, thumb rubbing up and down along one tendon. He'd ripped that free on people. Odd to caress it.

"Is that what I…?" She trailed off and sniffed again.

"Look who's getting used to things," Paul said.

"I'm hungry," she said.

"Be seen first," David said. He handed her a wad of bills and she counted the money out. "Go shopping."

The four of them swaggered off, Paul looping an arm around Marko, then spinning to blow a sardonic kiss to a disapproving matron. Her shoulders stiffened, but when he grinned at her and winked her mien became flustered and she scurried off. He'd given her a story to share over chips and onion dip and her weekly bridge game. _One of those punks,_ Dwayne could almost hear her say in a half-scandalized, half-excited voice. _He was flirting with me, can you believe it?_

Marko looked at her and curled his top lip before he rammed an elbow into Paul. "Cass not enough for you?" he asked. "Gotta raid the old age home now?"

Dwayne found a spot perched above the Haunted Castle ride. The bright lights shining down on the sign and the fake stones left patches between them no one would look at. Too much light left you blind and no one could see the darkness that pooled behind the flood lamps. From that vantage he could watch Cass buy a corn dog and eat it, licking the mustard she doused it in off her fingers. He could see her flirt with a boy who almost managed to keep his eyes on her face, but finally couldn't stand it and stared at the cleavage pushed up by the bustier. He could see her go into one of the overpriced tourist shops with their t-shirts, but once she was inside she disappeared and he dug his fingernails into his palms and counted until she came out again.

"That obsession shit'll kill you," David said from behind him.

Dwayne didn't bother to turn around. "How long we going to play looksie?" he asked.

"Long enough to be sure one of the Widow's people sees us. Go be seen with Paul."

The compulsion pushed at him, and with a scowl, Dwayne took off. He landed behind the water flume ride, another area where it got dark enough no one would notice his arrival, and stalked off through witless crowds. Marko had propped himself where he could shoot water guns to win - or more likely lose - a rigged race, and Paul had leaned up against the counter and was looking out into the crowd.

"See anything you like," Dwayne asked.

Paul snorted.

"I'm going to win a stuffed heart," Marko said.

Dwayne shrugged and leaned next to Paul to watch the people go by. "Do you think you would spot one of hers?" he asked.

Paul's eyes followed a girl in a bikini top despite the cold night. "Maybe?" he said, but it was more of a question than anything else. "Do they know who we are?"

"After the Max fuck up, I think everyone in California knows who we are," Dwayne said. Sometimes he wanted to bring that man back to life just so he could kill him again. Star was probably photocopying their pictures to give to every vampire hunter she could find. Had she given Laddie back to his parents? Which would have been crueler: making him trail after her or returning him to what had passed for his home?

"You miss him," Paul said with far too much perception.

"He was a good kid," Dwayne said. Before they could do anything as horrific as delve into feelings, Marco pumped a fist in the air and crowed with delight. His ridiculous plastic frog had beaten all the other plastic frogs to the top of its track. He snatched the cheap heart with its red fun-fur out of the hands of the boy behind the counter.

"A present for the girl we're visiting tonight," he said. "Who can resist a man who brings her his heart?"

Dwayne snorted.

David rejoined them, Cass trailing after him. She'd bent her head forward so her hair hung in her face, her shoulders were hunched, and she was dragging the toes of her boots along the pavement. Dwayne flicked a worried glance at David, but his answering look spelled out murder for anyone who crossed him. He spun back to face the inexplicably sullen Cass and raised an arm as though he were going to backhand her. She clenched her jaw and trembled, but didn't try to duck, and Dwayne began to growl. Paul elbowed him hard.

"Remember your place," David said. He looked at the rest of them and the fury Dwayne expected to see was missing from eyes that nearly twinkled with good humor. "We're done here," he said. He grabbed Cass by the arm and flung her at Dwayne. "Handle that, please."

He would have growled again, would have fought against the sire bond to raise his own hand to David, if she wasn't muffling a giggle against his chest. He pulled back to frown down at her and she schooled her expression back into the hangdog misery, but he'd seen the sparkle in her eyes. Whatever play David had her acting out had left her delighted with herself.

It was slightly irritating David hadn't bothered to tell him about this up on the roof top. He fixed his dark eyes on the head vampire and waited until David jerked his head back toward where they'd left the bikes, then channeled that irritation into wrapping Cass's hair around a fist as though he were going to drag her after him. She made her own low hiss at that. Too far. He compromised by keeping the fist in her hair, but resting it against the back of her head. The visible threat seemed to please David, but Paul murmured a, "She's gonna kill you for that later," at him as he loped off.

"Brave man," was Marko's opinion.

She did jerk her head free once they were safely in the shadows, but the grab of her hand and kiss to her knuckles seemed to earn forgiveness. "Jerk," she said. He shrugged and mounted his bike as she shoved the results of her shopping into her jacket and zipped it up.

"Can we go visit Marko's new friend now?" Paul asked.

Cass swung up behind him and rested her cheek against his back. He twisted to look at her. The eye makeup had gotten smudged on her left eye. She must have rubbed it at some point. Other than that she didn't seem upset, but he had to check. "You okay?" he asked.

She raised herself up enough to press her mouth to his, then nipped at his lower lip. "Let's ride," she said when she pulled away. "How fast can you go?"

He could go very fast indeed. The cheap apartment complex where Marko's friend lived wasn't far, and he felt the same letdown she seemed to when they pulled into the alley behind the building. He never wanted the thrill of the wind and the power of the bike to end. The darkened back door let them in easily enough. The building wasn't anyone's home, per se, so, like a store they could come and go. The individual units, however, were a different matter, and despite Marko's standing invitation, he knocked at the door like an agreeable suitor.

When the girl opened it, she seems surprised to see them. She was wearing a polyester nightgown in an unfortunate shade of lavender and she'd wiped all the makeup off her skin. Dwayne hadn't noticed how much foundation she wore when she was lit only by the campfire. It was a lot. Puberty hadn't been kind when it came to her skin, but he was happy to see her bare now. Max Factor and Covergirl left a nasty feeling of grime on your teeth.

"Wow," she said. She reached a hand up to pat at her hair as if she could transform herself back into put-together, flirtatious doll of the beach with a single touch to her hair. "You came. It's so late. I wasn't expecting you."

Marko leaned up against the door frame and smiled at her. He held the stuffed heart out in front of him and her eyes widened with delight when she saw it. "Hi gorgeous," he said. "Can we come in?"

"You're… You're all here?" she asked. She sounded a little nervous, but she let Marko hand her the stuffed heart, wrapped her arms around it, and squeezed. Marko had managed to enchant her, but when her eyes flicked over to David, her smile faltered. He might exude sex appeal with every crooked smile, but it was the appeal of the wolf who found you in the woods and asked where you were going. If he didn't attack you now, it was only because he planned to devour grandma first. Marko's girl might be stupid, but even she recognized David's lopsided smile meant trouble.

"That's okay, isn't it?" Cass asked.

Seeing Cass seemed to reassure the girl and she let out a laugh that tried to be welcoming. "No," she said. "It's cool. I'm just surprised is all. Come in."

They all stepped over the threshold and David shut the door behind them with a loud click. "So, do you live alone," he asked.

"I do," she said, "I mean, I don't, but my roommate is out of town and -."

"Too bad," David said.

Cass had become captivated by a cheap mirror the girl and her missing roommate had used to decorate their living room. Invitations were magical. "This eye makeup looks terrible," she said. She turned and pointed a finger at Marco. "I can't believe you let me go out like this."

Marko shrugged and turned the stereo on and up.

"It's just a little smudged," the girl said. She had to raise her voice to be heard over the sound of the music. "You need to use waterproof - "

They never were to learn what her recommendation was for smudge-proof, waterproof eyeliner because that was when they fell on her and after that the only sound she made was screaming.

. . . . . . . . .

 **A/N – Thank you to breenieweenie and coffeequeen73 for beta reading this for me.**


	7. Chapter 7 - Art, Conflict, Deception

"I think it's rude, is all," Cass said. They'd finished draining their victim and fallen easy prey to the resultant rush. You never felt quite as alive as you did when you fed but that rush and that exultation left them sprawled over the girl's floor, clothing draped here and there. Paul still had his pants off, Marko was wiping more than blood off his mouth with a smirk.

He leaned his head back so it rested against the sorority girl's couch and nudged at her body with his toe. "Dark creatures of the night," he said. "And you're worried about rude."

Dwayne pulled her hair out of the way and leaned forward to bury his face against her neck. She might be saying it wasn't polite to have sex in a woman's apartment after you drained her, but she hadn't actually tried to stop Paul and Marko either, and she'd kissed him with a ferocity that had left his mouth swollen and his neck punctured. With the high from the kill easing, she'd pulled her feet under her and curled up against him.

"Rude isn't screwing in her living room. Rude would be getting discovered by the roommate," David said. He picked at a bit of blood caught under one nail and, when he could couldn't work it out, sucked on the finger.

"Only if it was after sunrise," Paul said. "If she showed up now, I wouldn't worry about rude so much because she'd be dessert."

Cass let out a noise that sounded suspiciously like a snicker. Paul had started rifling through the cassette tapes on a shelf someone had built out of cinderblock and boards as he talked. "Phil Collins?" he said in a tone of disbelief as he stood in front of the collection. " _Journey_?"

"I don't pick them for their taste in music," Marko said. He grabbed the stuffed heart he'd won for the girl and threw it at Paul's head. "I pick 'em for their beauty and class."

"And blood type," David said.

"Oh, very funny," said Paul. "She was just easy." He'd opened one of the plastic tape cases and was pulling the magnetic tape out one yank at a time, leaving a pile of black spaghetti on the carpet. "Who listens to this shit?" Paul systematically destroyed tape after tape as the rest of them watched in languid, uncaring ease until David checked the time.

"Put on your pants," he said. "We're cutting it close."

From there it was a bustle of movement. Pants pulled on, boots laced up, blood wiped from mouths. Cass took a last look at herself in the mirror, her hands touching her hair and the tight busier as though she couldn't quite believe it. Vanity was, perhaps, the one sin denied them, and watching her indulge made his blood pound. Dwayne waited for her at the door as Marko, Paul, and finally David sauntered off into the night. "I don't look like me," she said. "Not the me I was."

He shrugged. He doubted he looked much like the scared boy hoping he wouldn't get hit who had finally worked up the nerve to run. Time changed everyone, even people who didn't become monsters. She turned and left with him, body and destroyed music in heaps on the floor where the police would find them, another unsolved murder.

Day passed, they slept, and then night came and with it the urge to feed. The itch sang under his skin and made him want to fly. Move, it said. Swing through the world that belongs to you. Let yourself be as wild as you want for who will stop you. The all felt it. They all burned to be out of their dark tomb and back among the sounds and scents of the living.

They passed through the sleepy town with its murders and its boardwalk and threw looks back and forth to one another as they prowled the side streets. They were gods among men. Immortals. Everything was theirs. Everything was good.

"You should get one," Marko said to Cass in front of a tattoo parlor. Yellow paint clung to the textured, stucco wall, and a fading mural on the side of the building showed skateboarders and waves and pot leaves all woven together in a symbolic mash up that would have made an art teacher cry. Paul stood pulling peeling chips of paint off the wall as they squinted into the shop. It might have been open. No sign declared it was closed. It might have been shut for the night. It was so smoky inside you couldn't tell. It wasn't the kind of place nice boys went to get Celtic knots on their ankles they'd think daring.

Cass looked at the skulls and roses and looked about as doubtful as a person could but she was more than willing to be pulled into a discussion about whether this design was lamer than that one and Dwayne leaned back against the alley wall and accepted a cigarette from David. Poison that couldn't hurt him crept down into his lungs as Cass laughed and rocked against Marko, delighted with whatever he'd said to her.

"And here comes our pigeon," David said with malicious delight. Most people avoided these dark side alleys. It was wise to be afraid of the places where the streetlights had been broken and pools of shadow collected like spilled oil. That made the airy walk of the girl who traipsed her way off the main drag and toward the window of the tattoo shop odd and out of place. She didn't look like the sorority girls with their Benetton shirts and high pony tails and she didn't look like the tourists. If anything, she looked like Star, and Dwayne had to force himself not to let that bias him against her. Every woman in a gauzy skirt wasn't going to try to destroy them.

"Hi," she said to Cass and Marko, voice lilting up turning the greeting to a question. She caught her fingers in a dull grey necklace of hollow metal beads and links that the store had probably claimed came from Thailand. The flimsy chain rattled at she twisted it. "You could get a cross," she said. There was a pause and then she added with sly malice, "Ellen."

Dwayne moved to take a step toward the girl, planning to rip her head off her shoulders, but David set a hand on his arm. "No," he said with all the force of the sire compulsion.

"I'm sorry," Marko said. "Who the fuck is Ellen?"

"Oh, didn't she tell you?" The girl was all coy concern. "Your new little friend is –."

"Don't give a shit," Marko said. He set a hand on Cass' shoulder and leaned in closer to the newcomer. "This is Cass and you should go off and find something else to do before someone hurts you."

She pulled her lips back in a snarl that bared pointed teeth and just the hint of a vamp transformation. "Don't fuck with me, baby boy," she said. "You can't take me."

"Wanna bet?" Marko asked.

"You've been turned how long?" she asked with marked disdain. "I've been a vamp since you were crying about skinned knees on the playground. Don't set yourself against me. You'll lose." She turned her attention to Cass and put one finger under the other woman's chin and turned her face right, then left. "Pretty enough," she said. "Not my type, but lots of men like the cheap look."

Paul had pulled himself off the wall and taken a step closer to the confrontation. Only a hiss from David stopped him.

"There are five of us," Cass said. "Get your filthy hand off my face before we find out if there's strength in numbers, you skank."

The girl stepped back and dropped her hand. "Do you really think I'm alone?" she asked.

"Do you really think I care?" Cass said in return.

"You picked the wrong pack," the girl said. "David over there, he can't keep his crew. He'll run through you the way he ran through Michael and Star and Laddie and so many others before them. You're all disposable to him."

Dwayne could almost feel David tense up next to him. It was never a good idea to bring up Michael and the implication that that entire disaster had been his fault could only end explosively. The smug little vampire in her hippy skirt and that necklace that had surely been made in China seemed to realize she'd gone too far because her smile got a little shaky. She managed to get in one last jab. She took a step back and smiled.

"Your father said to say hello, Ellen. He said to be good because he's watching."

Paul lunged toward her at that, the half-command of David's hiss not enough to hold him back, his hands outstretched to close around her throat. She flung herself up into the air before he could touch her and Marko grabbed him and yanked hard. "Let her go, man," he said. "We'll get her later."

Paul reached a curling hand toward the sky and the distant laughter, his face contorted into a vamped snarl. Dwayne would have helped Marko keep him in check but his own hands were busy keeping Cass from flying after her in a blind rage. "She's got an ambush planned," he said into her ear as she clawed and fought her way up. "We make them come to us."

"We could have -."

"And started a war before we're ready?" David said, but his plans had gone awry already and he was angry enough to be nearly spitting. He strode forward and yanked at Marko's jacket. Marko paled a bit at the implied violence and ducked his head, half sullen, half submissive. "We do this my way. They think she's on the outs with us like they want, they approach her, _we_ have the ambush."

"They want her," Dwayne said.

"They just want to fuck with me," David said. "Cass is an excuse."

Cass took a deep breath and Dwayne thought she'd calmed herself down and things would get easier from here until she spoke. "Who was Michael?" she asked.

"A bad fucking idea," Paul said.

"Max's fucking whiz kid," Marko added.

"He didn't want to join us," David said tightly. "Michael was a mistake."

She looked to Dwayne for confirmation and more explanation and he tightened his grip on her before saying, "Not everyone who joins us wants to stay."

"Not everyone likes to feed," Paul said.

"And Star?"

"Didn't want to feed," David said.

"Except on Michael's dick," Marko said. David shot him a look that would have made most people stop talking. Marko snarled a little and added, "Well, she did," before he backed down.

"Laddie?"

"He was ten," Dwayne said. He didn't want to talk about Laddie. "We agreed he shouldn't feed until he was older."

"Then how?" Dwayne knew what she meant. How had he survived. How had they let him? How had he not ended up exhausted and weak, slowly drained by the simple act of not eating.

"Your sire's blood will do to keep you alive," David said. He quirked his half smile up at her, the look that made peace officers angry and women spellbound. "If he lets you keep drinking it."

"And you did," she said.

"His sire was Max," Dwayne said. "And, yes, he did."

"And Max is?"

"So very dead," Marko said.

"Small loss," Paul muttered. He glanced up into the air where the vampire girl had gone. "We planning to stay here until she comes back with all her friends?"

"She won't," David said.

"I thought we were immortal," Cass said.

David eyed her. "Sun," he said. "Holy water. A stake to the heart."

"Being burned alive," Marko said.

She looked at David. "So, I can still kill him," she said.

"Oh yeah," he said. He drew his fingers across his throat and she smiled and curled her hands into claws. The _when_ was unstated, but David smiled at the question anyway. "When they think you regret this," he said. "When they think you regret us and invite you back to their lair so we can get all of them."

"Then let's go fight," she said.

Dwayne could feel his jaw clenching which was unfair and patronizing and a dozen other things, all of which made David's smirk grow. He shrugged and glanced over at Paul as if it didn't matter, sure, use their newest member as a wedge into his fight with the Widow. Would the bond between them supersede the sire bond if it came to that? He'd rather not find out.

"Let's go fight," Paul said. He poked his finger toward the window with its skulls and roses. "Then art if you want."

"It's shitty art," Marko said. "Forget it. I want cotton candy."

The pair of them took off, back toward the lights and roaring of the boardwalk and, with a sigh, Dwayne followed them. They shoved at one another, and laughed, and when Cass looped her arm through his and the rush of this _thing_ sped through him, for the first time since she'd joined them it seemed more like a threat than a delight. Magic didn't make nice things. It made monsters who destroyed you. That was all well and good if you were one of the monsters – and he knew he was – but it looked very different if the thrill running along your skin might be a weapon and not a gift.

He shoved his way past the line to get into the haunted house ride, one arm still on Cass. Marko and Paul hopped into the car behind them and David disappeared, off to feed maybe, or grab a smoke. The teenage attendant made only the briefest gesture towards looking for their passes before pasting a nervous smile on his thin face and telling them to enjoy the ride.

As haunted house rides went, this one was a good one. Most fairs had them, and Dwayne had been on a few in his life. They were usually short and dull, relying mostly on glow in the dark paint and things that popped out at you. He'd never found either option especially frightening, and this ride was just as filled with them as most. What saved it was length. As soon as the cart trundled its way through the doors away from the loading area and into the ride, he cupped a hand behind Cass' neck and pulled her mouth to his. The usual spark ran through his veins and she sighed with a warm pleasure that had nothing to do with the glowing skeletons. Her lips parted and what might have started as a need to remind himself this was real, tha whatever it was it was good, turned quickly into something more violent. She bit at his lip and sucked at the welling blood and he tightened his grip on her, holding her against him even as he lowered his mouth to her neck. He could feel the pulse, he could smell the salt and iron beating against the thin, thin layer of her skin. People were so fragile, there to be destroyed.

He pressed his tongue against the throb of her veins and she gasped at that touch even as his fingers curling against her scratched and scraped at her, drawing yet more blood to inflame them both.

The wounds would be healed before the next sundown.

Would they show up on the cameras watching for teenage troublemakers? He'd never thought to check. Still photography ignored their existence. As the cart twisted its way along the tracks he returned his attention to Cass' mouth for one last kiss before they began to fight in public and put on their show.

The boy waiting to help people out scowled at them as Cass adjusted her top. "This is a family ride," he hissed as Dwayne brushed past him. He stopped and looked down at the boy. Reedy, with a set to his jaw that began to erode under the long, unblinking gaze.

"Stop flirting," he heard and, when he flicked his eyes back toward the carts, Paul was vaulting his way free as Marko made a show of pulling up his zipper. "I don't think he likes you."

"But he's cute enough," Marko said. "Dump the girl and move on."

Cass snarled at him and he smirked back. You had to be looking closely to see the half-wink and the way one corner of his mouth turned up. "I said I wanted cotton candy," Marko said. "Enough of this trash. Let's go."

Dwayne let the pair of them hustle him off, Cass left behind with the attendant. Even as he walked away he could feel the boy try to stand a little taller. He wanted to be the hero who comforted the poor girl, used and abandoned by the gang. It was all Dwayne could do not to snort at the presumption. He'd be lucky not to be dinner.

He loped along, Paul's hand on his arm, until he snarled and disappeared onto the sand. Somewhere along the beach he'd find some idiot telling lies about the waves he'd caught and the girls he'd fucked and he'd tear the fool's throat out. He hated this plan, hated this idea, hated David for turning something he valued into bait for some kind of vampire game. He barely remembered the last time he'd given a damn about anything. Laddie. Before that, what? Childhood was a blur with sudden scenes that popped into focus. All bad. Leaving. Being turned. Feeding.

"She'll be fine." It was David, black gloves making the hands holding the cigarette nearly invisible. He'd come from nowhere. "Last I saw she was busy telling her life's story to a boy who'd bought her a corn dog."

"Am I the villain?" Dwayne asked.

"I think I am," David said. He sucked down a long drag of his cigarette, then turned it in his fingers and pressed the glowing ember onto his skin. Dwayne watched, impassive. Shit still hurt but if David wanted to torture himself, that was his problem. He pulled his hand away and looked at the burn, then shook his arm. "I love this," he said. "This life."

"Is that what we're calling it?"

"You disagree?"

Dwayne held his hand out for the smoke and David passed it over. He took a drag. There wasn't any point to discussing the matter. David knew damned well he'd never trade this. Hand him a glass of magic water that would turn him human again and he'd throw it back in the giver's face. Who wanted to be chained by death again having tasted freedom?

"Why didn't he stay?" David asked. "I've never understood that."

"Michael was a shithead," Dwayne said. He handed the cigarette back. "It wasn't your fault."

David didn't answer. They smoked in silence, then fed, then hunted down Cass. The ride attendant was hanging on her every word, his eyes flickering between her cleavage and her face, as she said, "It's just so hard, you know? I wish someone understood. I wish I had a true soulmate."

David almost choked. Dwayne glanced up to the roof of the line of shops and games. He didn't have to nudge David. "I know," he said so softly even the most attentive eavesdropper wouldn't be able to catch them. "Looks like our friend might end up somebody else's dinner."

Time to play the game. Time to rescue Cass from her love-lorn swain. Dwayne stalked forward and grabbed her by the arm. He considered spitting out some kind of hateful epithets but Cass saved him the trouble by giving him the hangdog resentful, snarl of the almost broken. "I'm coming," she said.

He yanked her onto his bike and, when he glanced back before driving off, the vampire who'd been perched on the edge of the roofline had settled in next to the boy and had her hand on his arm. Would they turn him or torture him to find out what she'd said? Dwayne didn't care. All he cared about was the arms around his waist, the way her hair flew back in the wind, the laughter that the movement tore from her once they were out of earshot of the boardwalk.

. . . . . . . . .

 **A/N – Much love to BreenieWeenie who alpha reads this for me. She is a gem.**


	8. Chapter 8 - The Frog Brothers

The night felt unusually cool and Dwayne found Cass standing at the entrance to their lair, one hand running a brush through her hair with absent-minded automation. He took it from her after she made three passes through the same spot. A sharp tug on her arm and she sighed and sat down on a tumbled boulder and let him work on the rest of her hair. Bikes and wind left you with knots that required patience.

"We going?" Paul asked. He had a takeaway container that anyone mortal would have been wise to avoid and was moving cold chicken to his mouth. Indifference to food poisoning: one of the many unexpected benefits of their lives.

"Gonna rain," Dwayne said and, indeed, the wind had the sharp bite of fresh water. Salt water didn't bother him. The sulphur-tainted springs in the back of their caves were fine. But truly fresh water stung. It wasn't the sun. It wasn't holy water. But it was unpleasant.

"Fucking hate the rain," Paul said. He tossed the leftover Chinese down the path. "This stuff is shit, though."

Cass pushed his hand away and took the few steps out from the shelter of their cave. The wind whipped the hair he had labored over and twisted it back into untamed wildness. She tilted her face up as if waiting for the water to begin pouring down. Dwayne didn't move to join her.

"Trouble in paradise?" Paul asked.

"I'm just tired," she said. "It gets old."

"Barely into immortality and she's already bored." David said from behind them. "What can we do to make your life more interesting, Cassandra?"

Dwayne turn slowly at that threat and ran a careful glance first along David's upturned collar, his jaw, and finally his cold eyes. David wasn't looking at him. One hand grasped the neck of their bottle and the other was opening and closing a butterfly knife with endlessly smooth movements. It flicked open, twirled, and was shut again.

"We could go to church," Marco suggested eying her t-shirt. He unwrapped a stick of gum, popped it in his mouth, and bit down on his lower lip with a hint of a grin. "I understand that's fun."

"Not really," Cass said.

"Come on," Marco said. He stepped up until he was right behind her. She had to feel his breath on her neck. Had to know his teeth could come out at any moment. She didn't move. "Tell me all your sins."

"You plan to forgive her for them?" David asked.

"Just curious," Marco said.

"I want to commit murder," Cass said. The words were a challenge that left the group unimpressed.

"I hardly think that counts as a sin," Paul said. There was a crack of thunder and when the lightning flashed you could see the line of rain coming towards them across the ocean. "Unless eating dinner has become sinful."

"Maybe I want to kill a vampire," Cass said. She turned and looked at David.

He smiled slowly. "I suppose that might count as murder," he said. "Do you have anyone in mind?"

"Does it matter?" She turned away from him to look out over the water again.

"Do I need to worry about your loyalty?"

She didn't answer with words. She put her hand out and he pressed the bottle into it. She pulled the cork out and tipped it back so his blood ran down into her throat. A reaffirmation of the bond. A recommitment to their group. "Can vampires leave their own packs?" she asked after she close of the bottle and wiped the back of her mouth her hand. "I thought this was forever and ever."

David delayed answering a bit too long, and Dwayne was struck again by how little he knew about this existence. He'd been turned to it. He'd embraced it. He'd never really asked questions. He'd never even thought to until Cass had shown up, magic that had to be as dangerous and ancient as immortality burning under her skin and calling to him.

David still hasn't answered, and Dwayne watched his eyes flickered to golden before returning to their own natural blue. "I don't know," David said at last. "Maybe."

"I'm off," Cass said at that. "Time to go to the boardwalk and play the meek victim for you."

Dwayne reached a hand out meaning to ask if she wanted company on the trip over, but she had already sprung into the air and disappeared.

"She ever been in rain?" Paul asked. Another flash of lightning showed the storm had gotten that much closer. It would be torrential soon.

"Don't think so," Marco said. "Want one?" He held out the pack of gum and Paul took a piece.

"Huh," Paul said. "Well, I guess that'll be interesting for her."

Interesting was one word for it.

"Go," David said. "Keep an eye on her."

The sire compulsion pushed at him and Dwayne snarled in almost reflexive defiance. David cocked his brows up and tilted his head to the side. "You don't want to follow her and make sure she's okay?" He asked. He closed up the knife, put it down in the pocket of his duster, and held his hand out. Marko passed over a stick of gum. "I thought you got all itchy as soon as she was out of sight."

"Fuck you," Dwayne said. What was between him and Cass was his. David had nothing to do with it.

"Take an umbrella," Marko suggested.

Dwayne snarled again, his eyes on his brother's throat. He'd heal just fine and a quick tear might teach him a lesson, might remind him who was dominant in this little pack of theirs. It wasn't as if David would stop him.

Marko must have recognized he'd crossed a line because he took a step back, lifted his chin just a little, and cast his eyes down to the rocks beneath their feet. It was a subtle gesture but it was enough. He wasn't planning a challenge.

Paul opened his mouth, probably to request that he bring back something alcoholic, but one look at Dwayne's face and he pressed his lips together.

"Have a good time," David said. The order to leave had been woven through every syllable and Dwayne took an involuntary step toward the mouth of the cave before he stopped himself and looked back and bared his teeth at David. David just smiled. "What if the Widow's group decide to abduct her tonight, bring her back as a present for her father, and no one is watching?" David asked. He unwrapped the stick of gum and popped it into his mouth. "Hate for you to miss that."

Dwayne flew hard and fast after that taunt, staying high enough to be out of sight of the streetlights. He could hear the rain now as well as smell it and he wanted to get under cover before it began to lash down on him with thousands of drops of irritating, aggravating discomfort. A quick kill in an alley behind a liquor store calmed his temper and yielded the umbrella Marco had suggested.

He licked the blood from his lips as he stepped over the body and began to pick his way through the nearly empty streets of Santa Carla. Humans didn't like rain either and the bulk of them had taken shelter for the night. The Widow's crew were surely holed up in their own lair.

Only an idiot went out into the rain. As the water began to come down, a few drops at first, then, with sudden fervor, a torrent, Dwayne had to acknowledge he was that idiot. He huddled under the flimsy shelter of the umbrella and moved from doorway to doorway, a monster and a fool and a man as miserable as any cat caught out in this weather might be.

He told himself over and over if there was any night Cass would be safe without a watchdog it was this one. That litany in his brain didn't keep him from looking for her, for trying to feel the thread that connected them, for feeling his shoulders relax when at last he saw her. The rain had left her drenched. She looked utterly miserable. Her shoulders were hunched and her chin tucked down. She'd shoved her hands into the pockets of her jeans and she slouched and stomped her way through the growing puddles.

He was about to call out to her when she pushed open the door of a shop that still had lights on and stepped inside, shaking rain from her hair. He looked at the name above the doorway, though he didn't need to. This was one of those places any sensible vamp avoided.

Atlantis Fantasyworld.

The Frog brothers.

Shit.

. . . . . . . .

Alan Frog knew a vampire when he saw one. The creatures had an arrogance to them that not even the oversized T-shirt on this drenched girl could hide. She'd let herself get soaked in the rain, though, so unless she had a lot of experience at disassociating her mind from the physical discomfort of her body, he would bet inexperienced half-vamp.

"Can I help you?" he asked as she stood, dripping, in the doorway of the shop. He squinted at that T-shirt. Was it really advertising some kind of church camp with Jesus raising a goblet? Definitely half-vamp. They'd learned from experience that those could be the most motivated when it came to staking the real monsters, though, so he didn't stake her on the spot.

The whole incident with Star and Michael might have been a bit of a cluster fuck, but they learned and adapted. Suborn the halves. Use them as tools. And that whole mess had killed one head vamp, so not a total loss.

"You want a towel or something?" he asked.

"Yeah," she said. "That would be great. Thank you."

He fished one out from under the register. They'd last used it to mop up a Coke some junky had spilled. It was a bit crusty and stiff but he wasn't going to be that fastidious when dealing with her sort, even if she was half. She'd take the dirty towel and like it.

She didn't say anything about the brown stain. She just started blotting at her drenched hair. Edgar emerged from behind a stack of comic books and let his eyes wander up her long legs, over the ludicrous T-shirt, and then to her face. He knew his brother had come to the same conclusion that he had: vamp but probably half. "What brings you in tonight?" Alan asked. "Most people don't go out in weather like this."

"Wanted to get away," she said. "Seemed like a good time to do it."

"Yeah?" Edgar asked. It was a challenge.

"Yeah," she said. "My roommates don't seem to like the rain very much." She pointed to the _Vampires Everywhere_ comic they kept out. Most people ignored it, looking for rare Batman or the Spiderman they remembered from their childhood and wanted to replace. She'd gone right to it. "Weird kind of comic," she said.

"It's a weird kind of town," Alan said.

"Yeah," she said. Both Frog brothers crossed their arms and watched her without speaking while she finished drying herself off, folded the towel up with the unconscious neatness of someone raised in a home where tidiness mattered, and picked up the comic book. She flipped through it, her eyes moving back-and-forth across the pages and they waited.

"This stuff accurate?" she asked.

"Accurate enough," Alan said. "You got a bit of a problem?"

She set the book down. They watched her hesitate, and then she said, "Patricide is one of the original sins of the Bible."

"I thought it was sex," Edgar said.

"That too," she agreed. "Do you think that, sometimes, some fathers might need -."

"Vamps need killing." Edgar shrugged. "Even if they're family."

"This father of yours," Alan said. He made little air quotes around father. "Kill him, you'll feel better."

"More like a step-father," she muttered.

"You say stepfather," Edgar said. "I say sire. Kill him. It'll end your troubles."

"The how is the problem," she said.

There was a flash of lightning followed by an almost immediate crack of thunder. The storm was right on top of them, and after the thunder died, Alan could hear a terrible ripping, tearing sound from the back of the shop in the alley before all the power went out and the shop went dark.

"Shit," Edgar said. "This fucking outdated wiring." He pulled a flashlight out and clicked it on.

"We got trouble," Alan said. He jerked his head toward the plate glass window in the front of their shop. With the lights out, they could see through the glass and there, on the pavement, incongruously holding a giant black umbrella, stood one of the vamps from the Star and Michael incident. He had on the same black leather jacket with the same wildcat painted on the sleeve, the same ugly necklace, the same scowl on his face. Unlike the girl standing in front of them, he clearly had gone to some trouble to avoid the water and his hair and skin were dry.

Not inexperienced, this one.

"Vamps and their fucking bare-chested bullshit," Edgar muttered. "Put a shirt on, asshole."

The girl turned and looked out of him. "Shit," she said. A thread of panic ran under the vulgarity, which seemed out of place on her. "I've got to go," she said.

"Wait," Edgar said. He turned his flashlight onto their lost and found box and dug through the crap that people left behind. They had the endless odds and ends of tourists and children and surfers saved. No one ever came back for it. Under packages of rolling papers and plastic hairclips and that wallet with a driver's license from Indiana he found what he was looking for. A pink, shiny Hello Kitty backpack. He dumped out the contents and, moving as quickly as he could, stuffed it with several stakes, a bottle of holy water, and a crucifix.

Her lip curled when she saw the last item. "Catholic idolatry," she said.

Apparently that T-shirt wasn't just something she'd fished out of a goodwill dumpster. "Yeah?" Edgar said, unimpressed. "The Catholic idolatry works. Shoot him, stab him, burn him. Kill your father."

"First chance I get," she said. She snatched the backpack from his hand and slunk back out the door. The vampire grabbed her by the arm and hauled her away and out of sight.

. . . . . . . . . .

Dwayne grabbed her by the arm and pulled her down the sidewalk as quickly as he could, away from the comic book shop, away from the Frog brothers, away from danger. She jerked her arm free and glared at him. "Do you know what those two are?" he demanded.

"Comic book nerds?" she asked.

"They're vampire hunters," he said. "Vampire killers."

"And me with a vampire to kill," she said. "How convenient."

Dwayne stopped walking outside a liquor store. He still had the umbrella in his hand and the rain came down on it making a horrible cacophony of pitters and powders. He stared at her. She met his eyes and when she began to smile he could see her teeth had started to grow. "You went there on purpose," he said, though that was obvious and he almost never stated the obvious. It led to the real question, though. "How did you even know about them?"

"I was on the streets for a while," she said. "I'm not that innocent and I'm not that helpless."

"And they gave you what you need to kill your father," he said. Stakes and crucifixes were the sort of thing they kept in their lair and, as he eyed the dreadful backpack stuffed with what could be his demise, he began to smile. It was so devious, so wickedly clever to go to the Frog brothers and pretend to be an innocent victim. They were probably crowing back in their wretched little shop. "They could've killed you," he said.

"I think they thought I hadn't made a real kill," she said. "That I wanted to kill David."

"Star did," Dwayne said. It was a reasonable assumption on their part. Wrong, but looking as fragile as she did, able to bear the rain, he'd have made that mistake too.

"How can you stand this?" he asked, jerking his head toward the water.

"I'm used to ignoring… you get good at not feeling things, you know?" she said.

He took a deep breath and counted to five so he wouldn't go off on her step-father in a rage. That wouldn't help anything.

"Can we get that?" she asked, pointing into the window at a bottle of Jack Daniels. Dwayne eyed the bottle. "Want a drink after your experience with the Frog brothers?" he asked.

"Don't you?"

He couldn't argue with that logic, but he held up his hand to tell her to wait. She took shelter in the doorway of the shop as he searched around for the side and then the back of the building. The junction box took longer to find that it had the comic book store, but at last he located it and, with one hard yank, pulled it off the building. The lights in the front window sputtered and died as the power went out, taking any security system that might be in place along with them. He was too edgy after Edgar and Alan Frog to want to deal with the cops.

One fist through the plate glass of the door got them in. He used the sleeve of his jacket to protect his arm as he swept it along the edges of the break so they could step through without fear of unintentional cuts. Just because you healed quickly didn't mean stuff didn't hurt.

They'd each grabbed two bottles when the manager stumbled his way from a back office through the dark store to confront them.

"Hey," he nearly shouted. The bluster would have been more impressive if he didn't reek of cheap clove cigarettes and vodka. "What the hell do you think you punks are doin'?"

He pointed a flashlight directly at them and Dwayne raised a hand to shield his eyes from the glare. He would've thought what they were doing was obvious. They were stealing alcohol. He turned to go, uninterested in wasting his time with this sweaty buffoon of a liquor store manager, but Cass had different ideas. She set the two bottles down and moved closer to him.

"God, you're a bitty little thing," the man said. He was literally licking his lips. It was a bad choice. It called attention to the way that those lips were fleshy, and pink, chapped. It wasn't the sort of mouth that inspired lascivious thoughts. He should avoid calling attention to it. Had no one ever told him he was unattractive and should rely more on charm? "Where are you from, girl?" he asked.

On the other hand, he came up a little short in the charm department as well.

"The beach," Cass said in an airy, lilting voice. She took another step toward him, and then another. "I'm so hungry," she said. "Do you have something I could eat?"

Whatever that the man was going to offer – and Dwayne would've bet he was going to tell her he had food in the back room and would you like to go back there with him, alone, without the boyfriend? - was drowned out by the scream he made when she fell on him. She had vamped out, her face contorted, her teeth elongated. In the dim light of the dropped flashlight, nothing could hide the way her eyes glowed with the eternal ferocity native to all of them.

She was beautiful.

She ripped her victim's throat open and drank from his neck with eager, angry gulps. When she turned again her face was covered with blood. "You want some?" she asked.

He wasn't hungry. He didn't need to feed. He'd already had that man in the alley, but they did all the sins and gluttony certainly was one so she didn't need to ask him twice.

Afterwards, she wiped her face with her church camp T-shirt and grinned at him, breathing heavily. "Home?" she asked.

He licked at the side of his mouth. He could taste the blood, the under-taste of cloves giving it an unexpected sweetness. He could taste her, better than any kill.

"Home," he agreed.

With that settled, whiskey back in hand, they fled out and up, into the night.

. . . . . . . . . .

 **A/N – Thank you to breenieweenie and coffeequeen73 for beta reading. They are the best.**


	9. Chapter 9 - Fools Believe Anything

Dwayne tossed one bottle of whiskey to Paul and handed the other, slight conciliatory tilt to his head, to David. He took it, weighed it in his hand, and asked, "Everything go well?"

"It was raining," Dwayne said, which meant both _no_ and _fuck you_ rolled into one. "We didn't see anyone important," was what he said out loud, knowing full well David wouldn't miss the subtext. David didn't miss much.

"Stopped to feed, I see," David said.

Dwayne glanced over at Cass. She'd set her bottles down, tossed the pink back-back onto her bed, and was wrestling off the soaked t-shirt. The liquor store manager still decorated the front, his blood obscenely staining the chalice a badly drawn Jesus was holding up. "Well," Dwayne said. "This is my blood you drink."

Paul almost choked. "Fuck," he said. "Warn a man, would you?"

Cass threw the shirt onto the floor and fished another one out then made a face before she put it on. "I'm so cold," she said. She slunk off toward the hot springs and, more than happy to wash away the fresh rain water, Dwayne followed her. By the time the others arrived, stolen liquor bottles in their hands, they'd both stripped down and lowered themselves into the water. The warmth soaked into him, sulphur smell and all.

"Party time," Marko said, and tipped the whiskey back into his mouth. He shook his head, let out a delighted yelp at the burn making its way down his throat, and passed the bottle to Dwayne. He took a long swallow himself. Alcohol was a kiss and a promise and one of the gifts of this life. He burned it off far too quickly to become an addict. He'd seen what happened to people who did. He'd tasted them too. Blood could be sour.

He passed the bottle to Cass. She took a cautious sip, then another, and, as Marko stripped down and flung himself into their spring with a splash, a third. Paul had his clothes off and was in the water a moment later. David, predictably, had stalked off to be elsewhere. Dwayne looked back toward the main room where the man liked to hold court. What was he planning? Maybe he was just wallowing in his solitude. Dramatics, thy name was vampire.

Paul's splash brought Dwayne back to the world he was in. Whatever games were brewing, life was here and meant to be lived now, which was something David ought to keep in mind. With hot water and stolen whiskey and friends, he indulged in every vice he could. Let tomorrow worry about its evils. The sun could bring the peace of death, they could sleep in their cavern, they could wake to feed again.

They did all those things. He did all those things. And when the sun went down and they stretched themselves back into their ever-dark world, David was already up, cigarette in hand. "It's cleared up," he said, nodding toward the sky.

Dwayne twisted his mouth as he looked out. The sunset had turned the sky into a brilliant red. It would be black soon, and dry, and they would go hunting. He expected another night of drearily baiting a trap that never attracted its prey, and it seemed like he would get it. At last, however, one of the Widow's vampires came up to Cass as she was tossing beanbags into a wooden frog's mouth, trying to win a stuffed animal. The girl leaned up against the counter, all insouciance and cheap jewelry.

Dwayne had positioned himself up in the shadows, a monster in a dark niche no one looked for, and he tried to stop his breathing so he could hear the conversation.

"You don't have to put up with them, you know," the girl said. It made Dwayne's hackles rise and he had to keep from letting out a snarl. This girl in her floral skirt and her stretchy top had a lot of nerve. He knew he should be pleased their various little shows had worked and that the Widow's fools had bought it all. Illogically, he wasn't. That anyone would think he was a thing Cass had to put up with made him angrier than he'd been in a long time.

Cass tilted her head to the side. From a distance, it made her look puzzled, and innocent. She looked like a little, lost waif. Squint a little, however, and her viciousness came into focus. Dwayne supposed he should be grateful the Widow Johnson's recruiter didn't have the wit to see past the obvious. "He told me I couldn't leave," she said. She was letting her voice hitch a little. "He said that once I had his blood, I was trapped."

Floral skirt girl shrugged. "You might be," she said. "People don't usually leave a pack without killing the head dog."

Cass wrapped her arms around herself. "He's… I don't know if I could do that," she said. "And where would I go?"

The girl put a hand on Cass' arm. It was probably supposed to be reassuring. Dwayne was surprised Cass could control herself enough not to tear the hand off on the spot. Paul didn't like to be touched. She didn't like to be touched. Only a fool went around manhandling vampires. They were not a friendly bunch, and they all had their reasons for choosing this life. Most of those reasons had violence behind them. Cass just dropped her head and played the submissive weakling. "You could come with us," the girl said. "It's a lot cleaner where we live, for one thing."

Cass trembled a little. It was so obvious Dwayne could see it from his perch, and he had to bite his tongue to remind himself she was acting. "Not with him there," she said. Those words rang true. "I came here to get away from him. I won't ever live with him again."

The girl laughed. It was a happy sound, charmed and excited to share a secret. "Is that all?" she asked dismissively.

"It isn't _all_ ," Cass said with sudden fierceness.

"No," the girl said. She still sounded delighted. "I mean, we're _saving_ him for you. He's only half, you know, like you, and once you kill David and join us, drink the Widow's blood, he's to be your first meal."

It was a good lure. Dwayne had to admit that. And it probably wasn't even a trick. Given the choice between a pretty girl and a middle-aged holy roller, well, he knew how most vampires would choose. Fanatics got boring quickly, and when you had forever, you had to consider who you'd still like in seven years, or seventeen, or seventy.

"If I kill him," Cass said. She took a deep breath. " _When_ I kill him," she corrected herself, "where do I find you."

"Oh," the girl said. "We'll find you."

Dwayne tensed, because this could go badly, but Cass shook her head. "Not good enough," she said. "You give me an address where you'll be. Where _he'll_ be, or I'm not playing."

"Don't you trust me?" the girl asked.

That question was too stupid to even answer, and Cass looked at her rather than bothering to reply. The girl laughed again. God. If Dwayne had to live with a person who laughed every damn time she thought she was clever, he'd stake her in her sleep. "You're smarter than I thought," the girl said. "Widow said you might be clever. Your father, now he said –"

"Step-father," Cass said. The girl looked confused and Cass repeated herself. "He's my step-father," she said. "My real father is dead."

That got her a, "Whatever," and a shrug, but the girl was also writing an address down, and she passed the piece of paper over to Cass who glanced at it far too quickly, then shoved it down in her pocket.

"I'll see you tomorrow night," Cass said. "I'll do it before the sun goes down, then be there."

The girl leaned forward and gave her a kiss on the cheek. "Sister," she said, then stepped back into the shadows at the side of the carnival game and melted away.

Cass walked away from the frog toss, her head down and her posture troubled until she reached the stairs to the beach. She almost ran down those, and all the way to the water too. Dwayne met her there, so cloaked in shadow no one could see them.

"She kissed me," Cass said.

"I saw."

"I want to wash my face in the hottest water that I can stand," she said. "She smelled like fried onions."

"Hot water we have," Dwayne said, and they did. They were barely in the confines of their lair when Cass tore off her clothes and flung herself back and down.

The springs weren't _that_ hot, but she ducked herself under them again and again, until Paul grabbed her by one arm and hauled her up. "What the fuck?" he asked. Dwayne might have snarled at him, might have swung an arm back and hit him, but he could hear the concern in that. So could Cass, apparently, because she didn't shove him. She didn't even tell him to get his hands off her. She just sagged and began to cry.

A lifetime ago Dwayne had learned that tears didn't help. Tears got you hit, or mocked, or worse. You bottled that shit up, or paid for it. That kept him alive. That had gotten him here. It also left him helpless in the face of actual pain. It was why Laddie had nearly killed him. Why he didn't know what to do now.

Paul knew. He wrapped his arms around Cass and let her cry until the tears slowly turned to rage. "That bitch," she said when she finally pulled herself away from Paul and sank to her shoulders in the water. Her hair floated, snakes radiating out from her tear-stained face. "She thought I was so fucking stupid."

Paul glanced at Dwayne. He hadn't bothered to tell anyone what had happened when they got back. Too much trouble, really, when he'd have to repeat it all for David later. David, who was out doing god-knows-what. "One of the Widow Johnson's group made contact," he said.

"I'm to kill David," she said. "It'll solve all my problems."

"How the fuck would that help?" Marco asked. He'd watched the whole thing, as helpless in the face of tears as Dwayne. Crying women were dinner, not friends. Not sisters. Star hadn't been a crier, thank god. Or a sister, if it came to that.

"They think she's half," Dwayne said. It wasn't an unreasonable guess. If he'd seen her walking out in the rain, he'd have assumed the same thing. The Frog Brothers had, and they were a damn sight smarter than that girl on the boardwalk.

"Idiots," Marco said.

"Well, Star was," Paul said. "And Laddie."

Dwayne glared at him, and he turned away. Laddie was off limits. If he ever found Star, if she had the bad judgement to be alive and in his reach, he'd make her death slow for that alone. She'd probably told herself she was doing the right thing, saving the little boy from the big bad monsters. Cunty bitch. Whatever middle-class white girl nightmare had sent her to the boardwalk, had sent her into David's arms, it hadn't taught her that there were monsters far worse than vampires. And now that boy was back into the human world, back in some foster home where –

Dwayne cut off that line of thought with the same discipline he'd used to survive his own childhood. He'd looked for Laddie. He'd look again. Maybe he'd show up, back on the boardwalk, looking for the things that made the nightmares run. Right now, they had other things to deal with. Fight the battle in front of you.

"I'm to kill David, then meet them," Cass said. "She gave me an address."

"I'm hard to kill," David said. He could move like shadows when he wanted to, emerging out of darkness as if he'd been there all the time. It was annoying. David quirked a brow up at Dwayne's expression, then crouched down. "I'll hold still for your first try if you like. Give you a shot." He smirked at her, sure she'd never cross him.

She splashed him.

Paul, Marco and Dwayne all froze. David squatted there, next to their hot spring, water dripping from his nose. It was undignified and unthinkable. "Bitch," he said.

"You said you'd hold still."

Unbelievably, David began to laugh. He stood up and pulled a bottle of something from his pocket, unscrewed the top, and tossed it to the side. He took one long swallow. "So I did."

"What about Daddy dearest?" Paul asked. He formed his fingers to a gun, pointed it at his head, and mimicked pulling the trigger.

"They're holding him for me so I can kill him," Cass said sourly. "Or so she says."

"You don't believe her?" David asked.

"Lying's a sin," Cass said.

They all stared at her and she shrugged. "You did say vampires do _all_ the sins. I assumed that one was included."

"Oh, I think you'll get to kill him," David said. He looked as satisfied as a cat standing over a dead bird. "She might not plan on it, but things that go exactly the way you expect are so dull and we wouldn't want the widow's party to get boring."

"Murder livens things up," Paul said.

"Lying's a boring sin," Marco said. He reached his hand up and David passed the bottle down. "Gluttony I can enjoy, and fucking, but the only panties lying gets into a wad belong to good church going folk."

"Which I was," Cass pointed out.

"Was being the key word," Marco said. "Show us the tits, babe, and relax. Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow they die."

Dwayne stretched out toward her, ready to give her whatever it was she needed. A steady hand. A fist in his brother's face. Instead, she took his fingers and cupped them under the curve of one breast. He weighed it casually, his eyes on Marco.

"Hey, they're all yours," he said. "I just like to look."

Water was running down the curve of Cass' breasts and hanging for a moment at the erect nipple before dripping off. The sulphur of the springs wasn't really to Dwayne's taste, but a quick grab with his free hand snagged one of the mini bottles left from an earlier party. He unscrewed the cap with his teeth, then poured the golden whiskey down over her skin. Cass gasped at the sudden stream of cold and Dwayne lowered his mouth to her nipple. This was better. This was much better.

And tomorrow people would die.

Not them. That wasn't fun. That wasn't how this game was played.

But people.

Assuming vampires counted as people.

. . . . . . . . . .

 **A/N – Many thanks to breenieweenie for alpha reading!**


	10. Chapter 10 - Denouement

"Showtime," Cass muttered and looked at the address that bitch vampire had given her one more time before shoving the scrap of paper down into her pocket and looking down the road. She'd picked her clothes for this carefully. Not too sexy. Not too confident. But pushing the boundaries of her step-father's views on women and dress just a little bit. Just enough to make him angry. The black Poison t-shirt with its skull that had an actual snake coming out of the mouth would set him off. The way she'd knotted it at her waist to make it tighter would have earned her a beating at home.

Dwayne had done that thing where he pushed his tongue against his teeth, raised his brows, and said nothing.

She slid her arms into the pick backpack and started walking. Showing up flying would make it too obvious she wasn't merely a halfling. Having one of the boys take her on his bike would have made it obvious she hadn't killed them all in their sleep.

As if she would.

How could anyone not want this? It was what she thought when she woke up, surrounded by a found family that actually liked her. It was what she thought when the blood hit her mouth. Feeding. Drinking life. This was how it was done, this was how you lived. Lived better. Lived longer.

It wasn't as if any of the people she fed on would have ever lifted a hand to help her. She'd asked, of course. Hinted at first to school counselors, then told a teacher who'd done nothing, then begged a policeman to even fill out the paperwork. To even uncap a pen. To believe her. To do something. Anything.

 _Go home_ , the man had said. _Do your algebra homework. Maybe try not to wear short skirts._

As if she had.

Cass put one foot in front of the other. It was infuriating to have to walk. To have to put one, plodding, inglorious foot in front of the other. She passed small houses, first close together, then further apart. The road began to angle up. She had to walk miles to reach the address in her pocket. But at last, she was there. A concrete walk led from the road through dead grass up to a white door. The siding on the house was the same shit brown as the dead lawn. The place was immaculate and ugly, with pretensions to suburban success. Cass doubted it was the Widow's real lair. She wouldn't be that stupid. But this was where the play would take place. Every show needed a stage, after all.

She took a deep breath and knocked on the door.

The same girl who'd approached her on the boardwalk opened the door. Her hair needed brushing, and toothbrushes were easy to steal even for homeless girls on the beach, much less vampires. There was no excuse for not taking care of yourself.

"You came," she said, sounding a little too surprised for Cass' liking. Then her eyes narrowed. "Did you do it?"

"No," Cass said blandly. "All four of them are perched on your roof right now, ready to rip your throat out as soon as we confirm the Widow's here."

The truth was so much fun.

The girl laughed and turned her head to call back into the dark house. "Our pigeon's here."

Small places were a trap. Dark places you didn't know were a trap. Cass took a few careful steps back onto the dead lawn and waited for them to come out to her. A few came out at first, all women, all young, all beautiful. Well, all _looking_ young _._ When an older woman came out, lines on her face and grey hair pulled up into a bun, she raised the question of did vampires age slowly, or had she been turned in her 70s?

A single boy slipped out of the house and looked at her with raw hatred in his eyes. Cass shook her head and took another step backward, pushed by the force of that loathing. She'd never even met this kid before and couldn't fathom why he focused so much anger on her. He looked young – a teen, certainly, but only barely, and he had his arms shoved into a thrift store find of a jacket, blue, with a row after row of buttons. It was an odd thing for a boy to wear, and odder still because it didn't fit him. His wrists hung out, lanky and free, and the fabric stretched tightly across his shoulders.

She dismissed him from her mind. "Where's my stepfather," she said. That had been the bait, and she'd be more than a little angry if they'd taken it out of their trap.

The old woman smiled. Her teeth were yellowed and crooked and all Cass could think was she must have been turned before routine dental care was a thing. Those teeth spoke of poverty, not power. "Cassandra," she said. The voice whispered across her skin and Cass could feel the pull. If she'd really only been half, she probably wouldn't have been able to resist that. She was old for real. Older than David.

Cass made a show of taking a reluctant step forward as if dragged, then, "My stepfather," she said again stubbornly. "You promised."

Hands pushed a man forward out of the darkness and into the weak glow of the streetlight. It was him all right. Thinning hair. Arms still taut because he did pushups every morning. Eyes that roved over her. The lingered at the snake on her chest, then rose back up to her face. "Look what you've made me do," was the first thing he said to her.

She shrank back down under those words. Even now, even here, even with what she had become she could feel it happening. Her shoulders curved forward, her gut clenched, her eyes burned with the first hint of tears. She'd meant to fake it. Making him think she was cowed had been her plan, and she hated – hated, hated, _hated_ – that he could reduce her back to this with just one sentence.

She slipped her backpack off and opened the zipper.

"And you look like a tramp," he went on. "That shirt."

"Well," one of the widow's vampires said coyly, "Don't blame her. She fell in with a bad crowd."

The boy with them stiffened at those words, and even as Cass was wrapping her fingers around a stake she wondered what his deal was. It didn't matter, though, because she had her hand around the wood and she was sliding it out and she was pushing herself forward as fast as she could, using every drop of vampiric strength to propel her, and the stake slid between her step-father's ribs and he stared at her with shock and hunger.

Then he died.

It wasn't as satisfying as she'd hoped, but she'd still take it. She wanted to burn the body. She wanted to cut him into a thousand pieces and feed him to the gulls. Let then scream for his entrails and then shit him out over the sea. He deserved that, and worse. She clenched her fists, feeling her nails dig into her hands, then forced herself to relax. Be stupid now and she might die too, and she wouldn't let him have that. She was going to live forever. Sleep all day, party all night. She was going to have _fun_.

Cass took a few steps back and looked at the assembled vampires. Easily a dozen had collected around their leader, and she'd transformed her face into the monster they all really were. "Some little girl lied to me," she said. "You aren't a half vamp at all."

Cass tossed her hair and shrugged. "We do all the sins," she said. "Even that one."

"We?" the widow asked.

David dropped down behind her first, then Dwayne and Paul, and finally Marco. She didn't have to turn to see them. She knew them by the way they moved the air, by the sound of their boots on the dead grass, by the slow laughter. "We," David said. "How nice to see you again, Dolores."

"The pleasure is all yours," the Widow said. "The Frog Brothers don't have the aim they once did."

"I'm a hard man to kill," David said.

Cass expected him to lunge toward the old woman. It was what he'd wanted - for her to set this meeting up so he could attack this group. Before he could, the Widow Johnson reached out a bony hand, fastened it around the misfit boy's wrist, and pulled him forward. "Say hello to your old friends, Laddie."

Dwayne sucked in his breath and took an aborted step forward, and the Widow made a tsking sound as she rested her hand across the boy's throat. She curled her fingers in, and Laddie closed his eyes. "Behave."

"Let him go," David said tensely.

"I was so sure you'd died, David my love," the Widow said. "Sweet little Star was sure you had. _Sure_ you were gone, and she wasn't even a halfing anymore, so the evidence seemed to say she wasn't lying. And yet, here you stand."

"Star was a lying bitch," David said. "And she drank Max's blood, not mine."

"Left you, didn't she," the Widow said knowingly. "Left you and took off, that pretty boy at her side, both free of you."

"No one misses her," Paul said.

"What are you doing with Laddie." That was Dwayne, and Cass could hear the barely contained violence in his voice. She could feel it snake along her skin and root itself into her blood, into her pores, into her gut. Dwayne was furious, which meant she was. She took a deep breath, in through the nose and out through her mouth like one of the yoga hippies on the beach, and tried to center herself. It was all she could do to keep from launching herself at this Widow, hands out, but the power roiling off her said that would be suicide.

She still had trouble holding herself back.

"Star left him," the Widow said. "Apparently, he wasn't interested in returning to his own family so he became part of ours. Isn't that right, Laddie."

"I'm very happy here," Laddie said woodenly. With the Widow's hand still at his throat, Cass doubted he'd risk saying anything else.

"He's a good boy," the Widow said.

Cass could hear, "She's a good girl," in her head, and "be a good girl," and, combined with the sight of her stepfather lying there, it was too much. She still had her backpack, still loaded with all the things she'd picked up from the Frog brothers. She pulled her face back from the monster and became Cass. The good girl who went to church and did what she was told. She was just a girl. Nothing threatening. Nothing you would look at twice. She wasn't sure it would work. Surely a coven of female vampires wouldn't fall for the idea that she was weak, but she was new and young and the Widow and David had been facing off for years. Decades, maybe. She'd been the appetizer to bring him here, and now the Widow had eyes only for the main course.

"You're looking haggard, Dolores," that main course said as Cass kept reaching so very slowly into her bag. "Immortality not suiting you?"

"Is he?" Cass asked Dwayne in an undertone. "I mean?"

"He's human now," Dwayne said.

"We'll let him turn when he's older," one of the girls said.

"Or eat him," another suggested, and laughter floated up from the group. Laddie closed his eyes and didn't react. It was good to know, though. Good to be sure.

Cass found the water bottle filled with holy water and very carefully began twisting the top off. One turn. Another. A third, and she slid the bag back into Dwayne's waiting hands, pulled out the bottle and threw all the contents into the Widow's face.

She screamed at once, her hands going to claw at suddenly burning skin. The wetness that hit Laddie rolled away, nothing but water to him, and he ducked out of the Widow's reach and took a few steps toward the boys before he stopped, unsure of his welcome. It was a hesitation Cass knew all too well. People like the Widow – like her step-father – they beat you down while telling you no one else would ever love you the way they did. She didn't have time to explain the dozens of _Seventeen_ and _Sassy_ articles she'd read on abusers and their games to him right now. She just grabbed a stake and launched herself at the young vampire closest to him as Dwayne snatched his arm and hauled him forward, away from the Widow's group, back behind Paul and Marko. He was only human. He needed to stay out of the way because here, now, war had broken out.

Killing humans one at a time was a rush. Cass knew she was supposed to feel guilty as she sank her fangs into thighs and necks and drank their life – drank their souls if such a thing existed – and lived to hunt another day. She'd been told all her life that murder was a sin, and maybe a little bit of those teachings had sunk in because killing humans might be great, but it was nothing compared to this. This had no guilt at all. This wasn't the predator taking down the prey. This was launching herself at an equal, at another killer, at someone who had had the _nerve_ to think she could taunt and insult and lure and get away with it.

She went first for the girl who'd been her contact. She'd been so contemptuous, so sure her age and experience would give her the advantage. Her throat tore out as easily as anyone else's, and she fell to the dry grass of the California drought with a satisfying thud. Another one of the Widow's girls tried to attack from behind. Cass spun, bending down to scoop up one of the stakes that had fallen from her backpack. Bless those sweet Frog brothers for making sure she had everything she needed to go vampire hunting. A quick arc of her arm upward and one of those stakes met the vampire hurling herself downward, fangs bared. Momentum drove the wood into her chest, then out the other side. Cass stepped nimbly out of the way of the body.

She wanted to go for a third. Marko had one, his teeth sinking into her skull, red blood mixing with the red of her hair. There were two bodies at Dwayne's feet, but they were both done for. Paul had an arm in his hand, perfect red nails balancing the torn flesh at the other end he was tearing into.

She scanned the yard, looking for anyone still moving.

Laddie had taken a few more steps back, but instead of running he was watching the carnage with a look of brutal joy in his eyes. Feet were fleeing back into the brush behind the house, and only the Widow remained, hovering in the air as she and David circled around one another. "You're a child," she said. "Go before I decide you need a good switching to teach you manners."

David laughed. He had a cigarette in his hand that he took one last drag on before flicking the burning end into her face. "Your girls are running away, Dolores," he said softly. Cass wouldn't have been able to hear the words if the rest of the fight hadn't died down into silence. She drifted back to Dwayne's side and curled against him, reaching a hand out to Laddie even as her eyes stayed fixed on the pair slowly revolving around one another in the air above them. "Time to take to your hole in the ground, Dolores, and heal before I rip those eyes out of your withered head and use them to stop up your vain, ugly mouth."

"You can't beat me," she said.

"I don't have to beat you, Dolores." David's words dripped honey and amusement and poison. "I only have to keep up."

She spat at him, then flew into the sky so quickly Cass couldn't follow her, disappearing into the darkness. One brown shoe tumbled down, falling past David to land next to the abandoned body of one of her coven. David settled down, picked it up, and made a face at the sandal. "Birkenstocks," he said. "Old bag. Figures."

. . . . . . . . . .

 **A/N – Thank you all for reading and being lovely. Special thanks to OlivieBlake and BreenieWeenie who have been endlessly supportive of this project.**


	11. Chapter 11 - The End

There was a moment of silence as David let the shoe drop before everything became chaos.

"We need to go," Paul said, "before that bitch shows up with reinforcements."

Dwayne couldn't decide who he wanted to check on first. Cass was dripping with blood, though as far as he could tell, she was also thrumming with energy and hadn't taken so much as a single scratch. He would know if she was hurt. He would feel if someone made her frown. Laddie, though. Laddie, he couldn't read. The child he'd known had been replaced by, well, not by a teenager.

At least he didn't think the boy was a teenager.

Time sped and slowed with unpredictable rhythms, but Dwayne was pretty sure it hadn't been that long. That Laddie was still balanced on the cusp of those years where everything was a rush of passion you didn't understand. However old he was, he stood in the same jacket he'd worn years ago, his wrists hanging out the sleeves, watching all of them with a guarded, untrusting expression.

Marko shoved one of his shoulders with an affectionate gesture that Laddie recoiled from. "Those bitches not buy you any new clothes?" he asked. "We could break into the old Army/Navy place, ransack the surplus for something."

Laddie wrapped his arms around himself and glanced at Dwayne, then, when he spotted Cass, looked away again just as quickly. "Not that anyone would make you get rid of that jacket," Cass said. The words sounded casual – bored, even – but Dwayne could feel they were anything but. "It's good to have choices, though."

"Yeah," Laddie said.

"Bikes're down the lane a bit," Paul said. "Didn't know what condition Cass here would be in, so didn't fly."

"Cass," Laddie said. "Like Star."

"No," Dwayne said sharply.

"She lives there now," he said.

"It was your place first," Cass said gently.

"I thought you'd killed them," Laddie said to her.

She shook her head. "That was a lie to get that bitch out where we could get at her."

"Good," Laddie said. Then, again, "Good."

Dwayne could hear the hitch in Laddie's voice, and see how he wrapped his arms around himself even more tightly and braced against something. Dwayne wanted to pretend he didn't know that kicked dog look, but he did. He'd worn it, years ago. Laddie had when he'd first come to them. It had taken longer than he'd liked to erase from the boy's eyes, and now it was back. If he could, he'd find Star and kill her to pay her back for that. He'd wait for the Widow to return with those reinforcements Paul was worried about and rip her throat out with his teeth. She'd taken Laddie – taken _his Laddie –_ and turned him back into this.

"No," David said.

Dwayne snarled.

"I said _no_." David pulled his pack of cigarettes out and lit one. "She'll get hers, Dwayne, but not from you."

"You think she's yours?" Dwayne asked. He curled his hands into fists, not sure if he was trying to hold his fury in or preparing to take a swing at his brother.

"No," David said calmly. "I think she's Laddie's."

Oh. Dwayne took a step back. That made a certain amount of sense, though it meant –

"Then we'll have to wait a few years," Cass said, following his train of thought.

"We can't turn you now," Marko said apologetically. "Not all the way. Wouldn't be right."

Laddie let out a harsh laugh. "Widow turned kids," he said. "Not me, though."

"Because she knew if we found out we'd kill her," Dwayne said. He was going to kill her anyway, or at least stand three inches behind Laddie as he did it. The thought of Laddie tied to that bitch forever, tied the same way he was tied to David, made something churn in his stomach. He had to bite his tongue and focus on the pain to keep from falling back into the monster, from flying up and following her. She should be flayed alive for turning kids all the way. She should have the skin stripped from her flesh one strip at a time. She was immortal and he could make her wish she wasn't.

"I can be half again, though, right?" Laddie asked. He glanced from David to Dwayne, waiting for something. Confirmation, maybe, that he was really welcome back.

"Not until you get a jacket that fits," Paul said. He glanced over at Cass. "You okay?"

She nudged her step-father's body with one foot. It didn't move, didn't rise, didn't do anything but lay flaccid and unwanted along the dead grass. "Yeah," she said, then again with more emphasis. "Yeah, I think I'm fine."

"Then we'll see you later," Paul said. He gave Laddie a small shove. "Clothes first, and maybe some Chinese."

"Always an excellent choice," David said. He glanced at Dwayne, and Dwayne could feel the weight of that assessing glance. A lot of years together. A lot of history. He let one shoulder go up, then down, in a 'it's fine' gesture that would have been lost on most people. Not David. He nodded sharply. "Then I think I'll get some air until sunrise," he said. "Let making sure none of that bitch's clan found our place be your problem."

"I think I can manage." Dwayne looked at Laddie and pressed his lips together. It had been years. He tried to measure them by the length of bare wrist hanging out that jacket, but human growth was as vague to him as time. "I missed you," he said.

Laddie's smile was, for a moment, unguarded. "I missed you too."

"And you can miss him more because you need clothes," Marko said. He gave Dwayne a little salute, two fingers taped to his brow then waved foward. "You have an hour."

"See ya," Paul said and shot up into the air. No one was going to do anything as terribly human as walk to the bikes. Not when flying was an option.

Dwayne watched them leave, then heard the roar of the bikes, and let out a long, slow exhale. "We should get back."

Cass rubbed her hands along the front of her pants, then looked at the streaks remaining on them with a moue of disgust. Blood got everywhere. Hazard of the condition. "I need a bath," she said.

"That, we can arrange."

The trip back to the cave via bike seemed to take forever. Dwayne expected to feel the talons and claws of the Widow at any moment and that made him lean into curves harder, go faster, try to outrace the fear. Cass hung on, her arms around his waist, her chest pressed against his back.

"I'm never wearing this again," she said when they arrived and she pulled herself off the seat. Dwayne watched impassively as she ripped the t-shirt over her head and tossed it away, down the rocks. The black fabric hung for a moment, caught by some gust of wind, before soaring away.

"Things get ruined," he said because she seemed to be waiting for an answer. People ruined things. Live long enough and everyone ended up with a list of places they couldn't go, the food they couldn't eat, clothes they could never wear again. As things to lose went, an old Poison t-shirt was pretty minimal.

"Not me."

It was a demand and a question at once, and Dwayne cocked his brows up. "People are hard to ruin," he said.

"We're not people."

"Harder, then."

She turned and pushed past him, past the beds with Star's old drapery, past the trashcans, past David's throne of a chair, all the way to the back where the hot springs bubbled, sulfured water straight from hell. By the time he'd stashed his bike and followed her, she'd tossed shoes to one side, blood-soaked pants to another, and lacey panties were crumbled in her hand.

"Those are nice," he said. If there was one thing she might want to keep from the outfit she'd murdered her step-father, he hoped it would be that.

She hesitated, then set them to the side of the springs before lowering herself in. "You coming?" she asked.

The boots were the hardest to get off. He'd learned the hard way that you didn't want knots to come undone when you were running and now, despite being almost infinitely stronger than any human likely to chase after him, he still tied them that way out of habit. Once they were off, everything else stripped away in a matter of seconds. Pants. Shirt. He wasn't wearing much more.

Cass' eyes lingered on his chest for a moment before dropping with obvious deliberation to stomach, hips, cock.

Which twitched under the inspection.

Dwayne lowered himself into the hot water of the spring, easing himself down and keeping his attention on Cass. She cocked her head to the side and lifted one side of her mouth in a half-grin that almost wanted to be a challenge. "Hard to get privacy around here," she said.

Dwayne shrugged. It was one of the prices you paid as a member of this clan. Even now, when his brothers had so obviously cleared out to give them time, finding excuses to be away, he wouldn't put it past Marko to walk in, bottle in one hand and smirk on his lips.

"We should take advantage," she said.

That was not something Dwayne planned to argue with. "There's one advantage of vampirism people rarely think about," he said.

"Oh?"

"Breathing is optional." He lowered himself under the water and knelt on the bottom of their spring. Cass was sitting on one of the rock ledges, hands resting on her thighs, knees slightly apart. He set one hand on each of those knees, and slowly pulled them away from one another, then ran his fingers over the skin of one inner thigh. Her muscles tightened under his touch, and one of her hands stole cautiously to his hair.

When he flicked a tongue across her, that hand tightened. When he went to work in earnest, the second hand found its way to join the first and tangled itself in his hair. He pushed her knees further apart, and this time she pushed herself toward him instead of tensing, and he let out a light laugh under the water. When he turned his attention to her thighs, laying a line of teasing kisses along one of them, she almost yanked his head back into position.

When she came, her hands convulsed in his hair, pulling harder than he would have expected, even as those thighs tightened around his head.

He wiped at his mouth under the water, then came up into the air. Cass had laid her head back against the rim of the spring, her eyes closed. When he brushed a thumb along one corner of her mouth, it turned up in a smile before saying, "So, we really don't need to breathe."

"Why would we?"

She lifted her head. "I think I should experiment with that little quirk."

She shoved him down and, with a laugh, Dwayne allowed himself to be pushed and prodded into sitting. When she sank below the water, air bubbles came up at first, brushing against the floating strands of her hair, and then they stopped. He might have worried about that – not breathing felt strange and wrong and far too much like being dead the first few times – but her hands were on him, and then her mouth, and he spared a quick thought to note she seemed to have the knack of not needing air mastered before all he could focus on was her tongue and her mouth and there was nothing else.

Only there was because he'd feasted tonight. He'd torn out the throats of well-fed vampires, and he was full to bursting with blood. Some of that was more than willing to let him rise to the occasion of a second round. Not in the spring this time. Water was hell on sex – almost worse than sand – but a quick pile of old blankets to soften the floor, and it was time for the encore.

When Cass pushed him back and straddled him, Dwayne let out a small, pleased smile. There weren't a lot of places he was happy to give up control. Lose control of your bike, pay the price. Lose control of the feed, risk discovery. Lose control of your emotions, and there were beatings and laughter and a foot held out to trip you as you ran by.

Not anymore, of course. No one had laughed at him in years. And all those people were dead. At least, he thought they were. But the lessons had been imprinted down into his skin and bones and blood and left him impassive and always – _always_ – the one in control.

Except here, where he could dig his fingers into a woman's hips – into Cass' hips, because there would never be another for him now – and let her drive the speed, let her drive the tempo, let her ride him with her head thrown back and her eyes glazed. He'd barely come – _she'd_ barely come – when the brief window of privacy disappeared.

"Christ, get a room," Marko said.

"Fuck you," Dwayne suggested, not moving from where he lay on the ground.

"Nah." Marko pulled out a pack of cigarettes, lit one, and inhaled. "Looks to me like you're spent for the night."

Cass flipped him off, and he laughed.

"Assuming you aren't interested in being a sex-ed manual," Marko said, "I'd get dressed."

That comment sent them both scrambling for clothes and shoes and, by the time Paul and Laddie walked in, they were sitting around a blazing trash can, fully covered and drinking scotch from a bottle passed back and forth, no sign of their post-battle celebration to be seen. Not that David was fooled. He eyed Cass, then asked. "All better now?"

"Getting there," she said.

"Good," he said, "because this was only the opening round. She'll come again. Someday."

"And we'll be waiting." Laddie pulled a stake out of Cass' backpack and ran his thumb over the pointed edge. He smiled, simple human teeth visible in the flickering light from the trash cans, and met Dwayne's eyes. "Won't we?"

The yes went without saying, but for now, they were home. All of them. Nothing was ever truly an ending - not until you got that stake in the heart - but this place, this cave, this family would more than suffice for now.

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~ finis ~

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 **A/N - Thank you to aygunrajabova and kellandry (both on tumblr with those user names) for beta reading this chapter, and to breenieweenie for her endless cheerleading and support of this project.**

 **I can't speak to whether it's fun to be a vampire, but it's certainly fun to write about them and I hope, dear reader, you have enjoyed the ride.**


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